- Nelson Duann, an exec in the SSD supply chain, has said: "The retail SSD market has almost disappeared"
- DDR5 RAM prices refuse to drop, although older memory modules are easing in price, but only very slightly
- System memory remains massively overpriced, and the same is true with many SSDs – and even hard drives are becoming more costly now
There's more news about the PC component crisis, in terms of SSDs – and how the retail market for drives is seemingly disappearing – and RAM pricing too, which is showing signs of easing a little 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 terms of SSD controller manufacturers, with the exec observing that: "The retail SSD market has almost disappeared."
Duann elaborated: "The controllers we sell to module makers are now largely ending up in SSDs that are shipped to PC OEMs. The reason is that OEMs cannot obtain enough NAND directly from memory manufacturers, so they are increasingly sourcing SSDs from module makers instead."
What Duann is saying is that with such a great demand from data centers these days, the retail market – meaning SSDs in boxes on shelves (virtual or physical) – is shrinking to the point of vanishing. Drives are going to data centers or PC makers, so the selection available to consumers is very much dwindling.
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 essentially level compared to June (they were up 1%, so next to nothing). With DDR4 and DDR3, prices actually dropped a bit – to the tune of just under 7%. With SSDs, pricing pretty much stayed level, with a slight increase of just over 1%.
Analysis: harsh realities
In the German market, memory pricing does appear to have held pretty much stable over the last few months. Or, to look at it another way, system memory has stayed exorbitantly priced throughout this year, still sitting at a level which is 400% more expensive than before the RAM crisis kicked in.
SSD prices have been stable for the last few months too, the difference being they went up in the first quarter of 2026, whereas RAM pricing actually fell (from a peak of 440%, believe it or not).
As ever, bear in mind that this is the German market – and just one source of stats – but it's at least not terrible news in that some folks have been predicting RAM could actually get pricier again as this year progresses. That could still happen, of course, but it doesn't appear to be doing so yet.
Based on the comments from Duann at Silicon Motion, mind you, we might expect SSD prices to start edging upwards again. If a prominent executive within the supply chain is talking about the retail SSD market 'disappearing', that must be a concern. It's worth noting that hard drive prices are now creeping up, too, based on 3D Center's stats – they are 58% pricier 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 keep watching these price tags and accepting the reality that there isn't much we can do about the situation – except refusing to pay massively inflated mark-ups. There is, of course, a line where consumers will do exactly that (in the main) which should theoretically keep a hard ceiling on RAM and SSD price hikes.
Meanwhile, given all this, if you can find a good deal on storage in the Prime Day sales next week, it might well be worth jumping on (especially in the case of larger SSDs, or external hard drives).
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