SSDs: WTF?

The manufacturers and data centers responsible for the ongoing RAM and GPU shortages and price surges have decided it's finally time to do the exact same

thing, but this time to SSDs, which have had a more latent impact. In the data we compiled from multiple sources, NAND spot prices in some instances like 512

Gbit TLC supply increased by nearly 9x in a span of 6 months. That hasn't fully hit completed consumer device prices yet, but it's starting to. SSD prices

are skyrocketing for a few reasons.

Partly thanks to data centers. There's

now a hard drive shortage alongside unforeseen data center flash storage demand. Manufacturers prioritizing

demand. Manufacturers prioritizing production of higher margin enterprise SSDs and some manufacturers intentionally cutting output amidst the increasing SSD shortage in order to protect their profitability, effectively

drying up supply of consumer SSDs. If

that sounds familiar to the DRAM cartel history piece we ran, it should. It's

the same companies mostly playing the same games where they know the demand is up and they've openly stated that they're prioritizing protecting their profit rather than meeting demand. And

this happens just as Chinese NAND maker YMTC came online in a larger way which helps keep the NAND prices up for everybody. Since October, the session

everybody. Since October, the session averaged for 512 Gbit TLC supply and increased from $2.70 to over $23 or by more than 8 1/2x its previously stable

spot price, even surpassing DDR5 16 Gbits recent spot price surges in terms of percent increase. The average two TB SATA SSD's price increased from around $150 in November to $350 currently,

while the average two TB NVME SSD soared from around $190 to $450 at the time of writing. And for consumer, Faison, a

writing. And for consumer, Faison, a NAND controller manufacturer, has reportedly begun requesting prepayments on orders. The CEO claims that 8

on orders. The CEO claims that 8 gigabytes of eMMC or embedded multimedia card modules rose from quote $1.50 to $20 last year alone. End quote. And

notes an under 30% fulfillment rate as reported by Tom's Hardware. Valve says

its Steam Deck is out of stock, quote, due to memory and storage shortages. End

quote. And previously cited issues with Steam Machine and Steam Frame pricing due to memory and storage. A managing

director at Kioxia, the third largest nan manufacturer with over 14% market share, told Digital Daily through Machine Translation, quote, "To be honest, this year's production is already sold out." End quote. Similarly,

the CEO of Western Digital, the largest hard drive manufacturer, disclosed on its quarter 226 earnings, quote, "We're pretty much sold out for calendar 2026."

End quote. Attributing 89% of its second quarter revenue to the cloud segment.

Meanwhile, some manufacturers are reportedly purposefully constraining supply amidst the shortage and prioritizing higher margin enterprise SSDs over consumer solutions. Chosen Biz

citing Omdia reports quote Samsung Electronics slightly lowered its NAND wafer output from 4.9 million last year to 4.68 million this year. SKHENX's NAND

output is also expected to follow a similar path from around 1.9 million last year to 1.7 million this year. End

quote. Reported via Yahoo Finance, City estimates that quote NAND demand driven by ICMS and quote or NVIDIA's inference context memory storage platform for its server solutions is projected to

represent quote 2.8% of expected global NAND demand in 2026 and 9.3% in 2027 end quote meaning that Nvidia will more than triple the storage needs

of this specific solution as measured against global NAND demand. And Trend

Force adds quote the surge in NAND flash demand is structural not temporary. This

trend is fueled by the fast growing needs for AI storage and hard drive supply shortages leading CSPs to reallocate orders to enterprise SSDs.

End quote. Kingston data center SSD business manager noticing early market indicators commented on the situation back in December to say this.

>> There has been a little bit of a delayed reaction. Um, but I I I think that, you

reaction. Um, but I I I think that, you know, you know, come, you know, January, February, um, I I think it's going to be very well known across the board that

SSD prices have significantly increased.

>> Luckily, Nvidia CEO Jensen Juan recently detailed precisely why we're seeing these sudden price surges, explaining.

>> And and so I I think the the the fact that everything is scarce is fantastic for us.

>> That's right. Everything being scarce is fantastic for not just Nvidia, but the companies that make the DRAM and now, as we're talking about today, the flash memory supply. We brought you this video

memory supply. We brought you this video with our GN tabletop gaming dice over on store.gamersacess.net.

store.gamersacess.net.

The two GN dice kits include one with e-waste inductors embedded within the sharp edge resin dice and the other with embedded and fully custom snowflake thecat miniatures. The kits include a

thecat miniatures. The kits include a D20, D12, D%, D10, D8, D6, and D4 die.

All shipping within a fully custom wooden box shaped like a D20 and marked with a GN Alchemy logo on the lid.

Flipping the lid over reveals a roll tray and the dice. Each kit also includes a treasure generator card matched to roll results that I personally wrote, plus a playing card matched to the theme of the dice. The

inductor dice have a technopunk goblin creature token that Andrew on the team made in Blender. And the snowflake dice include a snowflake the cat MTG style card with art drawn by my mom. We

carefully matched the color scheme of the dice number colors to the inductors and cats embedded within them. And we

even benchmarked the dice. Actually, so

did Snowflake. She rolled them a few times, finding that the embedded objects didn't meaningfully change the roll results for casual play. Support us

directly and grab a highquality dice kit available in both autographed and regular at the link in the description below. Thanks for your help. SSD price

below. Thanks for your help. SSD price

increases from nan flash supply increases are undergoing the same type of thing that system memory is. RAM DRAM

that we detailed in our RAM what the video from November of last year.

We'll kick off with a quick look at NAND supply spot prices. We'll compare that to DDR5 and DDR4 spot prices including multipliers and the absolute price changes. And then we'll review

changes. And then we'll review individual SSD prices, just a couple of them for each category, plus a look at YMTC supplied SSD prices as well because

they're kind of they're new in theory.

they might pace at a different multiplier than some of the more known suppliers and then we'll get into discussing the factors that are contributing to the mayhem in more depth. But some basics first. In

depth. But some basics first. In

contrast to DRAM, which is volatile storage, NAND flash is nonvolatile. The

difference is that volatile storage loses retained information with power loss, whereas nonvolatile storage persists without a power source for an extended period of time. However,

despite their different uses, there are a lot of parallels to DRAM and to flash storage solutions. And one of those

storage solutions. And one of those parallels is where it comes from. The

actual produced wafers largely come from the same manufacturers. There are some differences, but for the most part, it's a familiar group. Samsung, Micron, and SKHENX, who control a collective 93% of

the DRAM market, also hold a combined 62.9% of the NAND flash market. Kioxia,

formerly Toshiba Memory, SanDisk, and Chinese newcomer YMTC, make up the remaining 37 or so percent share, according to TrendForce and Counterpoint Researches most recent publicly

available market share data by revenue.

Another characteristic that both markets share is their pricing. Typically

following a cyclical pattern, meaning prices for each new DRM or NAND generation usually peak early in the product lifetime and gradually decrease over time, as seen in this long-term

trend of DRM spot prices, shared by Jukan on Twitter. This current demand influx is what's creating some of the abnormal pricing waves where it's actually consistently increasing right now despite cyclical data suggesting

that it should be decreasing right about now. And this is indicated well by the

now. And this is indicated well by the 512 Gbit TLC spot prices on the market in a price history chart shared by Mr. MPFR on Reddit, which compiles data from

other sources like DRAM Exchange. This

chart plots the spot price session averages from July 2025 to March 2026 for DDR5 16 Gbit, 512 GB TLC, and DDR4

16 Gbit. For reference, there are eight

16 Gbit. For reference, there are eight bits in a bite. We collected this data using internet archive to compile a brief spot price history as updated on

dramchange.com. These are supply costs.

dramchange.com. These are supply costs.

Contract prices for manufacturers are often different like say Apple. But spot

prices give us an idea for upstream supply chain pricing. DDR5 16 Gbit session average skyrocketed from under $10 in October to over $25 by the end of

November. Then it exceeded $30 in early

November. Then it exceeded $30 in early January and surpassed $35. Heading into

February, now it's approaching $40 spot.

The spot price for DDR516 Gbit at lower speeds has gone up by at least 6 to 6.7x since late August last year. As we

already know from prior videos, the end result is that a lot of the most common kits of memory have multiplied in price upwards of 5x or more in just as many months. 512 GB TLC or triple level

months. 512 GB TLC or triple level cell/nand spot prices were around $2.50 to $3 or so until October. Since

November, the 512 GB TLC session average has increased by around $5 or so monthly up to its current $23 session average.

Now, 512 GB is 64 GB. So, if you have multiple 512 GB TLC solutions in a single SSD to form a say two TB disc or

4 TB disc, then that'll affect you disproportionately as you add more and more of these uh modules. So that

increase so far is about 8 and a half to 9x since September. Worse than what we're seeing with DDR5 by a lot actually. DDR4 16 Gbit session average

actually. DDR4 16 Gbit session average experienced the greatest surge seemingly disproportionately affected by EOL announcements causing low supply because manufacturing's going offline and

surging stockpiling demand soaring from about $8 in August to $15 in mid-occtober to then nearly $80 by mid January where it's remained since. We

made this chart to identify the rate of price increases which is comparable among the entries because we're kind of normalizing here. We've plotted the

normalizing here. We've plotted the price multiplier rather than the actual dollar amount. Each entry's price

dollar amount. Each entry's price multiplier is relative to its own previously stable price, not to the others. This is held between July and

others. This is held between July and September of last year for the previously stable prices. DDR5 16 Gbit session average at slower speeds, surpassed its previously stable price by

2x just before November, exceeded both 3x and then 4x in November, which is also when we made our RAM at WTF video, and shot five and 6x past its previously

stable price in January, gradually increasing since, and currently it's approaching a 7x multiplier. SSDs are

far worse. 512 Gbit TLC session average prices broke 2x and then 3x past its previously stable price by November, plateaued in December, then jumped to 6.56x

multiplier by early February, pushing the percent of its increases just past DDR5s before widening the gap further in early March when it spiked to 8.6x its

previously stable price. DDR4 16 Gbits price multiplier initially mimics DDR5, surpassing 2x in mid-occtober, 3x in early November, and 4x in mid November

before diverting paths and rapidly climbing to around 9x its previously stable price currently. While DDR5 RAM kits still hold greater percent increases compared to completed SSDs in

terms of current market pricing for finished products to end users, our understanding is that the SSD market prices will eventually exceed DDR5's percent increases as the market reflects

these recent changes. Some of the reason for this lag could be buffer supply and people being slower to notice and therefore slower to stockpile. In this

table, we've collected Newegg prices for a couple of the most popular two TB M.2

two NVMe SSDs we could find compiled using PC Part Picker price history charts. This means that now we're

charts. This means that now we're looking at completed product pricing, which could use different supply than the prior table and also has other product cost factors. Since November,

Crucial's P310 rose from $145 to $300, making it the lowest priced entry at the time of writing on this table. Micron

recently exited the direct sale memory business, as in RAM, for its crucial line most famously. So, there are some other company decisions potentially contributing here. Western Digital's

contributing here. Western Digital's SN850X increased from $190 to $350 or by 84.2%, representing the lowest percent increase on this table. Kingston's NV3

experienced the greatest surge by both absolute cost and percent increase, swelling from $150 to $380, or by 153%.

Finally, Samsung's 990 Pro more than doubled in price from $190 to $400, making it the highest priced entry and accompanied by 111% increase. Of course,

there are more expensive SSDs out there, but we're trying to narrow the band of comparison. Averaging these entries

comparison. Averaging these entries produces a collective price increase from $168.75 in November to $35,7.50 50 cents

currently, yielding an average 113.7% increase in the past 4 months of these devices. We were also curious about the

devices. We were also curious about the increases for SSDs using China's NAND flash newcomer YMTC. We previously

covered YMTC in our rise of Chinese memory full-length documentary, which we'll link below if you're curious about the tumultuous rise of these companies.

This is the same chart of two terabyte drives, but with YMTC supply added. The

Fanchion S880 using YMTC NAND is comparable to each entry by advertised read or write speeds. We haven't tested these devices to validate their claimed speeds, but we did check the spec sheets

for each and match them for the comparison. We've also added labels to

comparison. We've also added labels to indicate which SSDs use a host memory buffer versus those possessing a DRAM cache. Hypothetically, SSDs with a DRAM

cache. Hypothetically, SSDs with a DRAM cache would have a higher cost impact than those without it. Thanks to the separate DRAM pricing surge, as seen here, with an over 120% increase since

November, SSDs using YMTC NAND are apparently unable to avoid the outrageous surges. YMTC and/or FCHON are

outrageous surges. YMTC and/or FCHON are capitalizing on this in much the same way as the other competitors. That being

said, the Fans SSD held the lowest price in November by absolute price of these anyway and is tied for the lowest price currently. The drive is between $80 and

currently. The drive is between $80 and $100 less than the two highest priced entries on this table, so it still appears to offer competitive pricing despite its recent increases. YNTC also

recently released its first PCIe 5.0 compliant NVME drive built on its in-house XTacking 4.0 architecture signaling its ability to remain developmentally competitive with other

manufacturers progression for the latest PCIe generation. Xtackin requires two

PCIe generation. Xtackin requires two wafers so is a wafer expensive approach to manufacturing that yields greater density. And again, check out our rise

density. And again, check out our rise of Chinese memory video for more information on YMTC and its expansion.

But we ultimately remain optimistic about what a growing manufacturer means for the industry amongst the shortage.

So far, they're still adjusting with the industry, just a little bit lower, but it makes it more difficult, at least for companies to collude, hopefully, especially as more cultures are introduced. Related to that, we have

introduced. Related to that, we have another documentary we put out recently called the DRAM cartel, where we cover the pricing collusion of American and Korean manufacturers of the past. In

January, Chosen Biz citing Omdia reported that both Samsung and SKH highinex lowered NAND wafer output from 2025 to 2026, adding through machine

translation, quote, Some also say the move reflects awareness that supply of commodity Chinese NAND is increasing.

Unlike Samsung Electronics and SKHEX, China's YMDC has been raising its profile in the NAND market since last year and steadily increasing volume. To

counter lowpriced competition from China, the companies appear intent on reducing NAN supply to mobile and PCs to defend profitability while increasing server and enterprise volumes to manage

the production mix. End quote. Which may

explain some of the reason that YMTC is also coming up if the others are reducing supply because YMTC has supply.

Now, this table plots the same data but focuses instead on the most commonly used 2 and 1/2 in SATA SSDs. We could

find price histories for 2 and 1/2 in SATA drives are becoming less common. So

there are additional contributing factors like potentially some of the manufacturing shifting to other technologies. Since November, PNY CS900

technologies. Since November, PNY CS900 increased from $153 to $220 or by nearly 44%. Team Group's TF Force Vulcan nearly

44%. Team Group's TF Force Vulcan nearly doubled from $118 to $230 or 95% increase achieving the greatest percent

increase listed. Samsung's 870 EVO rose

increase listed. Samsung's 870 EVO rose from $190 to $360 or $170 in total, granting it the greatest absolute increase. Collectively, the average

increase. Collectively, the average prices of these listings inflated from around $148 in November to $260 currently, yielding a combined average

76.3% increase within a 4-month span.

Hard drives don't use, they use platters or spinning discs, aka spinning rust.

Still, hard drives have manufacturing output limitations as well, especially with the recent surge in SSDs and are in high demand for data centers. While we

didn't find reliable price histories for any individual hard drives, we've decided to include PC Part Picker price trends chart for 3 and 1/2 in STA 16 TB hard drives. As seen here, prices

hard drives. As seen here, prices hovered around $350 for almost the entire year. Around December or so,

entire year. Around December or so, prices gradually increased, a trend that's continued monthly since. The

average 16 terbyte hard drive price has climbed from $350 to $440 currently, which amounts to over a 25% increase in just a few months. This is modest

compared to the over 75% SATA SSD average increase and nearly 115% NVME SSD increases, but it's still a noticeable price hike. We anticipate

these prices will continue to climb, especially for 20 TBTE and other segments desirable to data centers. As

for why the prices are increasing, we've broken it down into a few key elements.

The first is a hard drive shortage forming seemingly overnight towards the end of 2025 and beginning of this year, which in turn has accelerated the data center transition towards SSDs during a

time of unforeseen storage demand, which is causing pressure on the SSD market.

Also, this PC Mag write up from February notes that AI data centers reserved all of Western Digital's 2026 supply already. quoting Western Digital CEO as

already. quoting Western Digital CEO as saying quote we are pretty much sold out for calendar 2026 we have firm IPOs with our top seven customers end quote PC Mag

noted 89% of WD's revenue comes from enterprise and cloud service solutions which would include data centers data center Dynamics citing VP of storage provider Everpure formerly Pure Storage

describes the sudden shift explaining quote customers have been somewhat blindsided by the shortage as recently as two quarters ago there was still plenty of supply, he says, describing

the current situation as scramble mode, end quote. DCD's report also claims

end quote. DCD's report also claims enterprise hard drives are quote currently facing lead times of up to two years as manufacturers struggle to keep up with demand end quote and explains

how quote one way data center operators are looking to mitigate this problem is by transitioning to flash storage, specifically QLC or quadle cell storage.

End quote. In the finance world, City estimates that quote approximately 1,152 terabytes of additional SSD NAND will be required per Vera Rubin server system to

support Nvidia's ICMS end quote. Vera

Rubin is Nvidia's new server solution and ICMS is the inference context memory storage platform. So that's over one

storage platform. So that's over one pabyte of extra storage per Vera Rubin solution. City continues quote

solution. City continues quote accordingly assuming Vera Rubin server shipments of 30,000 units in 2026 and 100,000 units in 2027 NAN demand driven

by ICMS is projected to reach 34.6 million terabytes in 2026 and 115.2 million terabytes in 2027. This

represents 2.8% of expected global NAND demand in 2026 and 9.3% in 2027. a meaningful scale that is

in 2027. a meaningful scale that is likely to create significant upside potential for demand. End quote. Now to

us, that climb from 2.8 to 9.3 is really the concerning part on the consumer side. Similarly, according to this is

side. Similarly, according to this is actually their name, Mordor Intelligence, if it's a the Balro driving the intelligence or what, but quote Microsoft because of course it's

Microsoft following Mordor. Microsoft,

Azure, and AWS each bought more than 500,000 SSDs per quarter in 2025 to feed AI inference clusters. End quote. The

IDC reports that the worldwide server market quote grew by 97.3% in spending in the second quarter of 2025. End

quote. Naturally, the NAND manufacturers have begun shifting production capacity away from consumer SSDs and instead towards higher margin, high demand enterprise SSDs, which Trend Force

supports, reporting, quote, "The primary growth driver was explosive demand for enterprise SSDs fueled by large-scale AI server deployments by North American CSBs." Meanwhile, severe hard drive

CSBs." Meanwhile, severe hard drive shortages and extended lead times accelerated a shift towards NAND solutions, which further tightened supply. end quote. Trend Force also

supply. end quote. Trend Force also wrote, quote, "Capacity allocation will increasingly prioritize server applications, further tightening supply for consumer products." End quote. And

now at the height of demand for NAND flash, the manufacturers have reportedly begun cutting NAND production from its output last year with Chosen Biz reporting through machine translation.

Quote, according to data from market researcher Omdia obtained by Chosen Biz on the 20th, Samsung electronics slightly lowered its NAND wafer output

from 4.9 million last year to 4.68 million this year. That is less than the reduced production implemented last year due to sharply deteriorating NAND

profitability in 2024. SKHEX's NAND

output is also expected to follow a similar path from around 1.9 million last year to 1.7 million this year. End

quote. So at peak demand and as demand is actually growing annually, some of these companies are cutting production and as far as we can tell, they're doing it to maintain higher prices. That sure

sounds familiar. Our conclusion today is pretty simple. SSD prices are absurd and

pretty simple. SSD prices are absurd and we try not to predict things because honestly we know really just about as much as you do watching this where most of our data today it comes from publicly

available sources. We look at bank

available sources. We look at bank statements, what they're saying, what analyst firms are saying. We look at earnings reports. All of this anyone

earnings reports. All of this anyone could look at. It's nothing special.

It's not privileged information we have.

Uh so we try not to predict things. The

indication I'm getting though, if I had to take a guess, is that based on what we're seeing, it probably will get worse before it gets better. The RAM

situation, that's what we said in November, and look where it is now. We

went from two or 3x or something like that to like five or 6x on the prices.

Uh, and it looks like SSDs are following that trajectory. And actually in some

that trajectory. And actually in some ways the trajectory is is worse, but there's a latent sort of buffered impact to consumer completed product pricing.

And so whenever that buffer either subsides or demand changes in a way that knocks it out of balance from where it is now, it seems like there'll be a sudden surge in consumer pricing, not

just in the spot prices and and we'd assume contract prices. So that would be our guess. To quickly recap, due to a

our guess. To quickly recap, due to a mixture of SSD and hard drive shortages, unprecedented AI server and data center storage demand as servers transition to NVME drives, and manufacturers with a long history of collusion choosing to

cut supply further amidst the shortage.

NAND flash wafer spot prices are increasing at an even faster rate than DDR5 with 512 GB TLC spot pricing for supply currently sitting at 8.57X, its

previously stable price held between July and September 2025. Furthermore,

major manufacturers are running out of capacity for 2026, like Kioxia, which already sold out of its SSDs, and Western Digital, which has sold out of its hard drives. Current DDR5 RAM kit market prices still hold a greater

percent increase than completed SSD market prices, but we expect SSD prices to skyrocket in the somewhat near future as the consumer market eventually shifts to reflect the most recent spot market

changes. As an aside, we have some

changes. As an aside, we have some firstirhand experience with this. So, we

bought over 10,000 USB flash drives at 128 GB each for our Kickstarter style campaigns we did for our black market movie and our AI dystopia series of coverage where we're doing all kinds of

special reports on things in the industry. And a lot of you supported us

industry. And a lot of you supported us for those efforts. We as part of the backer tiers sent out these flash drives with some of our videos loaded on them.

And uh the part that's interesting, so we're buying those from MicroEnter.

We're not getting it straight from the source because I trust Microenter sourcing. I like where they get them

sourcing. I like where they get them from, which I think is flies on and uh and it works pretty well. But even they right now, they can't really supply us with more because the pricing is out of

whack and it's not predictable. And so

you start looking at a faster rate of change in the market for buying supply as someone who might be selling it and that's going to cause ripples and problems as well. I mean, for us, we just simply aren't buying more of them.

We have a little bit of a stockpile if we do, you know, more stuff with it. Um,

but a lot of these companies, they don't have that option because their main business might be selling storage products and so they're going to just buy more and then increase the price accordingly. But there's a bit of a

accordingly. But there's a bit of a buffer, a lag to that. In terms of forecast, Trend Force's most recent NAND flash report reads, quote, "Trendforce notes that with limited near-term NAND

capacity, expansion, and surging AI demand, pricing momentum is expected to remain strong throughout 2026." End

quote. So, that's kind of your recap on the flash pricing, the SSD pricing. We

have this in our RAM what the video as well. It's the same kind of format.

as well. It's the same kind of format.

We're trying to look at it before it gets too crazy to have something historically to look back at and understand what happened. Uh but there are a lot of parallels here to what we

saw happen with the DRAM cartel in the past. And you know these companies a lot

past. And you know these companies a lot of them are the same and they do adjust their supply based on profitability. So

I mean it's one thing to be able to sell everything you make. they can do that even if they make more. But if you don't have to work harder to make the same money, then I guess if you have

cooperative competitors, you just don't.

So that's part of this too. Uh and

then there's just the data center demand. But as far as you know, is there

demand. But as far as you know, is there anything you can do? The answer is no.

Obviously, there's nothing any of us can do. Uh, I guess if you're going to build

do. Uh, I guess if you're going to build a computer, it's the same thing we were saying with the RAM situation where it's like it certainly seems unlikely that it would get better anytime in the near term. Maybe it will through later this

term. Maybe it will through later this year, especially if the bubble starts popping or something. I don't know. I

have no idea. Like, I'm throwing a dart at a board just like anyone else would. Uh, but that's what it seems

would. Uh, but that's what it seems like. And we'll continue to monitor the

like. And we'll continue to monitor the RAM and the SSD pricing situations as we get through the year. We'll do regular updates just like we do with our GPU pricing segment. But right now, that's

pricing segment. But right now, that's the trend. If you were wondering what

the trend. If you were wondering what the happened to the SSD prices, then that's your answer. Uh, the same thing that happened to the RAM prices.

So, that's it for this one. Thanks for

watching. Subscribe for more. If you

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