The golden age of cheap memory and SSDs has been good to us all, but like all good things, it was never destined to last. At least not according to Techspot, which has reported that, due to forthcoming production cuts, the industry is likely to see an upswing in consumer prices towards the end of this year.
A drop in consumer demand during the pandemic (remember that?) led to a substantial oversupply of NAND and DRAM—the basic building blocks of SSDs and system memory— which in turn caused a significant drop in pricing that’s continued over the past few years.
In fact, prices on average have dropped by 30% since the start of 2023 alone. However, the price drop began to sputter and stall over summer, leading analysts to predict a recovery of the market and higher component pricing to come. According to Taiwan’s United Daily, several suppliers have already shown positive financial results recently with more expected to follow, suggesting the beginnings of a resurgence in the market, and that likely indicates price rises will follow.
To make matters worse, Samsung has decided to halve its production during September, with lower manufacturing levels predicted to last for at least the rest of this year. While this is no guarantee that pricing of NAND and DRAM based components will substantially rise, it’s a pretty good indicator that things are about to change in this sector. That's likely to make your next SSD or DRAM purchase a little more expensive than you may have been hoping should you hang around too long.
Relatively low consumer demand for the latest and greatest generation of SSDs and DRAM may soften the blow slightly, but what effect this has on the market as a whole remains to be seen.
Best SSD for gaming: The best speedy storage today.
Best NVMe SSD: Compact M.2 drives.
Best external hard drives: Huge capacities for less.
Best external SSDs: Plug-in storage upgrades.
Fortunately for those of you looking to upgrade in the next few months, we’re not far from what’s looking to be a bumper year for Black Friday discounts before these price rises are likely to start kicking in. The stock of SSDs and memory already out there on the shelves of retailers or distributors has already been paid for, after all. So, we're expecting the bargain prices we saw around the recent October Prime Day to be pretty similar until at least Black Friday itself, and probably on until the end of the year.
Remember to check out our list of the best SSDs for gaming and our guides for DDR4 and DDR5 recommendations, and of course we’ll be updating and covering all the latest deals as we find them to ensure you’re getting the best bang for your buck.
