GoKawiilFollowing our brief tour around the state of RAM pricing in 2026, it seemed only fair to extend our ‘State of the Union’ look at PC component pricing to another market that has taken an absolute beating in the AI crunch: SSDs.
It’s a sadly familiar tale. Like RAM, SSDs were once an afterthought when it came to PC building — you always knew you could find a ton of capacity, decent speeds, and a reputable brand at a reasonable price. Like RAM, SSD shortages have driven absolutely insane price rises across the board, and like RAM, the death of Micron’s Crucial has seen a major player leave the scene.
As you can imagine, the SSD market is decidedly more complex and fragmented than the RAM market, for obvious reasons. Whereas your principal choice of RAM boils down to DDR4 vs DDR5, and then capacity, there are a plethora of SSD solutions for PC. There are M.2 drives for performance, or larger SATA SSDs for volume or even external storage. The former also sees vast performance differences between Gen 5 and Gen 4 options, adding another dimension.
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Sadly, prices on SSDs generally have skyrocketed. This uncomplicates the picture slightly. But just how badly have SSD prices changed in the last year, and can you buy an affordable SSD these days?
12 months on
(Image credit: Future)
We’re fortunate to be carrying out this look 12 months removed from the 2025 Amazon Prime Day event, which means we have a plethora of pricing and sales data from exactly a year ago that we can use to pinpoint just how badly the SSD market has tanked. As we did with RAM, we’ll start with our fabled 2025 Amazon Prime Day build, in which we recommended users kit out our 1440p, 7800X3D gaming rig with a Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB SSD. The deal at the time was a hefty discount, bringing the price to $113, down from $176. That same drive is on sale right now, discounted by 36%, to an eye-watering $363, triple the price. The list price of that drive is $579.99, and the highest actual price we’ve seen on it is $465 in May this year, more than four times what it cost a year ago.
Famously, buying a 4TB SSD could net you M.2 storage for your PC for as little as $0.05 per GB just over a year ago, with devices like the WD Blue SN5000 and Silicon Power UD90 costing just $214 and $209, respectively. The SN5000 has doubled in price to $449.99, with the cost per GB at 11.2 cents.
Swipe to scroll horizontally Drive Price 12 months ago Price today Increase Samsung 990 Evo Plus 2TB $113 $363.49 +221.5%
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