Bad luck for the memory manufacturers, good luck for consumers: The prices for client SSDs are expected to fall further in the third quarter of 2023. Trendforce’s market research team expects average discounts of 8 to 13 percent by the end of September. In German retail, prices are already falling.
Advertisement
According to Trendforce Manufacturers and shops are struggling with high stock levels, especially when it comes to SSDs for retail. Deeper in the supply chains, however, the situation could stabilize in the coming weeks: The costs for NAND flash memory components are expected to rise by up to 5 percent by the end of the quarter. That would have an impact on SSD retail prices at the end of the year at the earliest.
Manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Kioxia and Western Digital are achieving price stabilization by reducing memory production for months. Since the beginning of 2023, they have all been struggling with billions of dollars in net losses.
retail price reductions
In the price comparison, you can watch the SSD prices tumbling almost every week. The first NVMe card with a capacity of 2 TB is currently approaching the €70 mark: Teamgroups MP33 (from €71.90). A few more are available for less than 80 euros, including faster PCIe 3.0 models that can transfer more than 3 GB/s.
If you are satisfied with a terabyte, you can always get more SSDs for less than 40 euros. The first models are approaching the €35 mark, such as Lexar’s NM620 (from €36.78).
Especially with the cheap SSDs, the manufacturers rarely guarantee certain components. Instead, they often build in the memory components and controllers that they can get cheaply and create the specified specifications. It’s worth taking a look at the data sheet on the manufacturer’s website. In the best case, the manufacturer guarantees the use of TLC flash, which writes three bits per cell (triple level cells).
Advertisement
(mma)