SSD prices are heading up fast
If you have been thinking about upgrading your gaming PC with a new SSD, you might want to stop waiting. According to Cameron Crandall, Datacentre SSD Business Manager at Kingston, SSD prices are already climbing hard and are likely to keep rising throughout 2026.
In a recent appearance on The Full Nerd Network podcast, Crandall explained that NAND flash, the core component inside SSDs, has seen a massive spike in cost. NAND pricing is up about 246 percent compared to the first quarter of 2025. Even more alarming, around 70 percent of that jump happened within just 60 days.
Since NAND flash makes up roughly 90 percent of the material cost of an SSD, this is bad news for anyone building or upgrading a PC. The bottom line from Kingston’s side is simple: if you know you are going to need more storage, it is smarter to buy sooner rather than later.
Crandall’s advice is clear. If you want a native SSD plugged straight into your motherboard’s M.2 slot, do not sit on that purchase for months. Prices 30 days from now will likely be higher, and there is a good chance they will be higher again 30 days after that.
Why SSDs and RAM are getting so expensive
This spike is not just random bad luck. It is the result of huge demand from data centres chasing AI workloads. Big cloud and hyperscale companies do not want to be caught without enough hardware to power AI services, so they are buying up high capacity SSDs and loads of DRAM at an aggressive pace.
That rush has created a shortage everywhere else. When the biggest buyers in the world pull in huge amounts of storage and memory, it squeezes supply for:
- PC gamers building or upgrading rigs
- OEMs like Acer, Asus, Lenovo, HP, and Dell
- Smaller system builders and businesses
We are already seeing the impact. Major laptop and PC brands have either raised prices or warned that price hikes are coming. Research from firms like Goldman Sachs has also been pointing toward higher DRAM and SSD prices as supply struggles to keep up with demand.
The result is a kind of memory and storage crunch. RAM prices are up. SSD prices are climbing sharply. And this does not look like a short term blip that will simply vanish in a few weeks.
AI is the main driver right now. Data centres want:
- High capacity SSDs to feed data to GPUs quickly
- Lots of DRAM to support large AI models and workloads
Those orders get priority, so the consumer market feels the squeeze later. It is a classic trickle down effect, and it lands directly on gamers and PC enthusiasts when they go to buy new parts.
Should you buy storage now or wait it out
With all this talk of rising prices, it is easy to panic and want to hoard hardware right away. That is not the best approach either. It is worth being smart and strategic about your upgrades.
Here are some practical tips if you game on PC or build rigs for others:
- If you know you will upgrade storage soon, move it up the schedule. If you are sitting on a nearly full SSD and were already planning a 1 TB or 2 TB M.2 NVMe purchase, doing it sooner is likely cheaper than waiting another few months.
- Focus on internal SSDs first. External SSDs might offer slightly different pricing dynamics, but if you want fast game load times and a smooth Windows experience, your internal drive is the priority.
- Avoid buying far beyond your realistic needs. While prices are climbing, there is always a chance of a future correction. Buying reasonable capacity is smart. Panic buying multiple drives you will not use for years is not.
- Watch bundle deals and prebuilt systems. As OEMs pass on higher RAM and SSD costs, some prebuilts might still offer competitive value versus buying parts separately, at least for a while.
Crandall also warns about a potential future twist. If there is an AI bubble and spending suddenly slows, we could end up with the opposite problem later: too much stock in the market. In that scenario, companies that bought expensive NAND and DRAM at peak prices would be sitting on costly inventory while prices start to fall again.
That is why memory and storage manufacturers need to be very careful about how much they buy and hold right now. Overcommitting right before a downturn can be painful for them financially.
For regular PC users, this means that while prices are going up now, there is always a chance of a long term correction if AI demand cools off. The difficult part is timing. You might wait for a drop that does not come for years, or buy now and watch prices slide later. There is no perfect answer, but acting based on your real needs instead of fear is usually the best path.
On the positive side, Kingston says it has no plans to exit the consumer market. Unlike Micron, which recently pulled out of the consumer memory space to focus on AI data centres, Kingston intends to keep serving client and consumer SSD users. That means gamers and PC builders will still have familiar brands to choose from even as prices shift.
So where does this leave you today if you are a gamer or PC enthusiast
- If your current SSD is almost full or you are planning a new build in the next few months, consider locking in that drive now.
- If your storage situation is comfortable and you do not have immediate upgrade plans, there is no need to panic buy. Just be aware that next year’s prices could be noticeably higher.
The storage market is riding an AI driven roller coaster. For now, the climb is very real, and SSDs and RAM are along for the ride. Planning your upgrades with this in mind can save you some cash and a lot of frustration down the line.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/kingston-sounds-the-ssd-pricing-alarm-as-the-company-has-seen-a-246-percent-increase-in-nand-wafer-prices-with-the-biggest-increase-within-the-last-60-days/
