SSD Pricing Update, Q2 2024: A Rising Trend for Storage

Reading how prices are notoriously and coincidentally going up makes me remember that virtually all of the memory chip producers have been previously confirmed to be price fixing for RAM chips at that point but nevertheless, this is when those pesky regulators really should be send forward to well, do their jobs because this is a case of seeing smoke where we know there was fire before.
 
For months (pre December 2023) Micro Center had the Crucial MX500 4TB SSDs advertising for around $189 (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more) and every time I went to reserve them online as they showed inventory of 2 or 3 I'd get an email saying they only had 1 or they didn't have any.

I got 1 of them for around that $189 mark and I had been trying up until through January to get another one, but always meet with the email saying they didn't have any even though online inventory showed multiple on hand.

Once the end of January came around the price hit $229 and has only gone up from there. Now my local Micro Center shows they have 25+ available, but they're priced at $349 a pop.

Amazon (actually sold by Amazon and not some crap 3rd party) shows the same drive at $272.
Newegg (actually sold by Newegg and not some crap 3rd party) shows the same drive at $274.

Good drives and at the time were really well priced which is why I was trying hard to get a couple of them to replace both WD Red 5400 spin drives on my plex server. I've only got one spot for M.2 on my board and that's preoccupied with a 500GB drive for the OS.

The prices have gone up at least 40%, if not more for SSDs in the past 5 months. Crap pricing practices if you ask me.
 
Uh oh! SSD prices are on the rise due to the AI boom. This could impact affordability for consumers looking to upgrade storage.
 
Oh well, I guess I won't buy anything. I was willing to give them my money... but if things are that bad (and will get worse...) nope. Nobody will get mah money.
 
Oh well, I guess I won't buy anything. I was willing to give them my money... but if things are that bad (and will get worse...) nope. Nobody will get mah money.

Prices will only go up. Pay now or pay more later.

I got a Samsun 990 Pro 2GB w/ heatsink for $130 during Black Friday at MC. It's actully cheaper to get the heatsink version. It's $170 now. It was $200 recently. There is a dip in prices now. I would get an SSD now before they go back up.
 
I'm glad SSD's are so durable, unless you need space or you have a really bad drive, there's not much to be gained through an "upgrade" to an equivalent size.
 
I'm glad SSD's are so durable, unless you need space or you have a really bad drive, there's not much to be gained through an "upgrade" to an equivalent size.
The durable part depends on what kind of drive you buy. QLC drives are garbage, QLC DRAMless drives are even worse.
I've seen many cheap SSDs die after a year or less, especially Kingston and ADATA branded.
 
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