The price reductions for SSDs have apparently come to an end for the time being. After a good year of continuous downward movement, the prices of numerous models have risen again in the past few weeks. Especially with the cheaper SSDs, this only amounts to a few euros so far – but in relative terms that’s already 5-10 percent.
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Prices should continue to rise until the end of the year. The Market researcher Trendforce predicts, that NAND flash components will be up to five percent more expensive in the fourth quarter. In addition, memory manufacturers are apparently drastically reducing their production again: Samsung is said to have decided to halve the production volume in September. Other manufacturers would likely follow soon.
Since the beginning of the year, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Kioxia, Western Digital & Co. have been making billions in losses with the production of NAND flash components. The warehouses continue to be overcrowded, forcing companies to sell their chips at low prices. From the company’s perspective, the situation is gradually improving.
SSDs in price comparison
Mushkin’s Tempest 1[ ]TByte (from €35.79) is currently the cheapest 1 TByte SSD in M.2 design and with PCI Express connection in the price comparison. With up to 3.3 GB/s it is one of the faster PCIe 3.0 models, but Mushkin does not guarantee a specific memory type. Buyers can also get frowned upon QLC flash that stores four bits per cell (quadruple level cells). This writes more slowly when the cache is full. However, Alternate is the last dealer to offer the Tempest at this price. A similarly fast alternative is Lexar’s NM620 (from €38.49).
Meanwhile, the cheapest 2 TB models start at just under 70 euros. There are a few fast PCIe 4.0 models that transfer at least 7 GB/s for less than 100 euros.
4 TB SSDs in M.2 design are available for less than 200 euros if you come to terms with QLC storage. An exception is Lexar’s NM790 (from €194), which at least partially uses TLC chips from the Chinese manufacturer YMTC.
(mma)