The chatter about SSD costs going up has change into a refrain of voices in latest instances – and right here’s one other report chiming in, underlining the chance that solid-state drives will change into costlier quickly sufficient.
German tech website Computerbase (by way of PC Gamer) highlighted a report from The Chosun Each day, a South Korean newspaper, claiming that Samsung has made an enormous reduce to manufacturing ranges for its NAND chips.
These are the modules that are the precise storage on-board SSDs, and manufacturing ranges have supposedly been reduce in half.
With a 50% drop in manufacturing, the stock of chips from Samsung will clearly be quite a bit leaner going ahead. This implies SSD makers can pay extra for that NAND, and naturally, move these prices on to the buyer in drive costs.
Samsung is the most important presence within the NAND market, representing some 30% of the overall gross sales quantity, so this might have wider impression, for sure.
On high of that, Computerbase observes that the second largest NAND producer, SK Hynix, has plans to observe in Samsung’s footsteps and reduce manufacturing in an identical manner. (We aren’t given any precise quantification on this case, although).
Evaluation: Rocketing costs
So, is that this unhealthy information for shoppers? Sure, clearly, with the caveat that we should take any particular person report with a complete lot of seasoning.
The South Korean supply might have crossed wires someplace, or the talked about 50% reduce may be off the mark (even when pulling again manufacturing does certainly occur, possibly it received’t be to this extent).
What makes this appear extra doubtless is that, as we talked about on the outset, there’s a complete weight of rumors and predictions from analyst corporations that SSD worth hikes are coming.
Solely final month we heard that larger capability SSDs (2TB and 4TB fashions) are going to skyrocket – and that precise time period was utilized by an trade insider within the report which was aired. This comes on high of an entire lot of earlier spillage round SSDs getting pricier.
At this level, it’d be a shock if the worth of solid-state drives, notably a number of the finest SSDs on the market, didn’t enhance considerably as 2024 rolls onwards. As with all market, there are peaks and troughs, and we will solely hope that the pricing incline we look like ascending at the moment flattens out earlier than too lengthy, and hopefully turns within the different route. It should finally, after all – it’s only a query of timing, as at all times.
Regardless of the case, in case you’re trying to purchase the most effective SSDs, it appears to be more and more doubtless that the very best transfer is to buy now reasonably than wait.
