It looks like your next gaming SSD could be more expensive than planned. A new report claims that a perfect storm of high demand and recent production issues could force major manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk to raise their prices, leaving gamers with a higher bill as a result.
While the best SSDs for gaming aren’t always the cheapest, price rises are never going to be well received by gamers. Unfortunately, with NAND flash manufacturing limited to just a few core suppliers like Samsung, the gaming SSD market isn’t able to insulate itself from the troubles of its manufacturers.
According to industry rumors reported by Taiwanese outlet technews.tw, a number of causes are behind the cost of SSDs potentially increasing by more than 10% in April. The first is the story of an undisclosed power outage at Micron’s Singaporean NAND manufacturing plant, a rumor that apparently caused a rush in orders to ensure adequate supply, coupled with an earlier reduction in output planned by other manufacturers including Samsung and SK Hynix taking hold in the market.
As a result, technews.tw reports that SanDisk has issued instructions that it intends to raise its prices on April 1, with Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix reportedly set to follow suit. That also matches the actions of Chinese firm Yangtze Memory, which has already announced plans to raise its pricing by 10%.
Manufacturing issues aside, this follows a set of earlier production cuts by several manufacturers, in place since Q4 2024, that were designed to help reduce “oversupply” in the market and reverse a downward trend in NAND pricing for the manufacturers. The AI boom is also believed to be playing its part, with higher demand for flash memory affected by the growth in enterprise-level SSD storage.
We’ll have to see what the SSD market looks like for gamers over the next few months, but if you’re running out of storage, now might be a good time for an upgrade. A speedy option would be the Samsung 990 Pro, an NVMe M.2 SSD with amazing PCIe 4.0 speeds that you can often pick up for $100 or less – you can grab one for yourself by clicking this link here.
In the meantime, if you’re thinking about a quick and easy storage upgrade for your gaming rig, check out our best external SSD for gaming guide for some USB-powered options at a range of different prices.
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