- Nelson Duann, an exec in the SSD supply chain, has said: “The retail market for SSD has almost disappeared”
- DDR5 RAM prices refuse to drop even though older memory modules are dropping in price, but only very slightly
- System memory remains massively overpriced, as are many SSDs – and even hard drives are getting more expensive now
There’s more news on the PC component crisis when it comes to SSDs – and how the retail drive market seems to be disappearing – and RAM prices too, which are showing signs of easing a bit in some respects, the notable catch being that this isn’t the case with DDR5.
Tom’s Hardware interviewed Nelson Duann, who is a VP at Silicon Motion, one of the major forces in SSD controller manufacturers, with the exec noting that: “The retail market for SSD has all but disappeared.”
Duann elaborated, “The controllers we sell to module manufacturers now largely end up in SSDs shipped to PC OEMs. The reason is that OEMs can’t get enough NAND directly from memory manufacturers, so they’re increasingly buying SSDs from module manufacturers instead.”
What Duann is saying is that with so much demand from data centers these days, the retail market – meaning SSDs in boxes on shelves (virtual or physical) – is shrinking to the point of disappearing. Drives go to data centers or PC manufacturers, so the selection available to consumers is very limited.
On the RAM front, Notebookcheck.net highlighted a report from 3D Center, which examines component prices in the German retail market for June, including memory and SSDs.
The price of DDR5 RAM sticks remained largely level compared to June (they rose 1%, so next to nothing). With DDR4 and DDR3, prices actually fell slightly – to just under 7%. With SSDs, prices remained largely level with a slight increase of just over 1%.
Analysis: harsh realities
In the German market, memory prices seem to have remained fairly stable over the past few months. Or to look at it another way, system memory has remained unreasonably priced throughout this year, and is still at a level 400% more expensive than before the RAM crisis started.
SSD prices have also been stable for the past few months, the difference being that they rose in the first quarter of 2026, while RAM prices actually fell (from a peak of 440%, believe it or not).
As always, keep in mind that this is the German market – and only one source of statistics – but at least it’s not terrible news, as some people have predicted that RAM could actually become more expensive again as this year progresses. It could still happen, of course, but it doesn’t look like it will yet.
Based on the comments made by Duann at Silicon Motion, mind you, we can expect SSD prices to start moving upwards again. If a prominent supply chain executive is talking about the retail SSD market ‘disappearing’, that has to be a concern. It’s worth noting that hard drive prices are now creeping up as well, based on 3D Center’s statistics – they’re 58% more expensive than they were a year ago, compared to 34% last month (and just a 14% increase back at the start of 2026).
For now, we’ll continue to keep an eye on these price tags and accept that there’s not much we can do about the situation – other than refuse to pay massively inflated margins. There is of course a line where consumers will do exactly what (in the main) they should theoretically keep a hard cap on RAM and SSD price increases.
In the meantime, given all that, if you can find a good deal in stock in next week’s Prime Day sale, it might be worth jumping on (especially in the case of larger SSDs or external hard drives).
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