As flash prices rise, the end of great SSD deals may be near

If you’ve delayed buying a cheap SSD for the holidays, you might want to try and jump in before Christmas. Market reports out of Taiwan note that the price of the flash memory used in SSDs is increasing sharply, meaning those prices will hit your wallet before long.

TrendForce’s DRAMeXchange monitors the spot market for DRAM and flash, which of course power a PC’s system memory and storage — and, more and more, external storage as well. Spot prices rise and fall, like the stock market, based upon supply and demand. Memory makers suffered during the pandemic, but have implemented production controls to try and raise prices, reports Tom’s Hardware.

TrendForce notes that the price of 512Gbit TLC flash has nearly doubled from about $1.30 to $2.57 from July to November, and that street prices of finished SSDs, such as the 240GB WD Green SSD, have started climbing, too: just 5 percent in the most recent November 24 update, but heading up. As Tom’s noted, the spot price of 2x8Gb DDR4-3200 RAM has jumped from $2.99 in July to $3.21 in November — a smaller amount, true, but evidence of a rising trend.

Manufacturers of commodities like memory and flash face an ongoing problem: SSD and memory module makers continually pressure them to lower prices in order to unload their inventories, but the memory makers can’t survive unless they eke out some profit to justify further investment. Now that they’ve unloaded their inventories to allow PC makers to build (and sell) their products to the public during the holidays, they’re looking ahead to when demand is expected to seasonally drop during the first and second quarters.

That, apparently, is going to allow flash and memory makers to raise prices somewhat, and those prices will be passed along to the makers of memory modules and SSDs. The bottom line is this: Take advantage of the best SSD deals while you can, as you’ll likely be paying more for an upgrade in the next few months.