Should I Buy an SSD Now?
2026 data, not vibes. Updated August 28, 2026
Should you buy an SSD now? If you're waiting for storage to resume its old habit of getting cheaper every year, the data says that habit is broken for now: drive prices more than doubled over the past year and have held near those highs since spring, with no sign of the collapse that would reward waiting. But storage has one advantage RAM doesn't: you don't need all of it on day one. Most boards take a second drive, so buying the capacity you need now at a fair price, and adding more if prices soften later, is a plan the data supports. Fair is checkable: a drive near its own recent low, at a sane price per gigabyte, is a fair buy in this market.
What actually happened to SSD prices
Storage rode the same wave as memory, with one difference that matters for timing. The initial explosion hit in late 2025 alongside RAM: NAND supply pivoted toward datacenter demand, and drives that had been drifting cheaper for years repriced hard. Both NVMe and SATA drives now cost well over double what they did a year ago.
The difference is in the shape. RAM's explosion was concentrated in a few months and then cooled. NVMe kept climbing well into spring 2026, months after DDR5 had flattened, before finally stalling in late April. Since then it has been rangebound, drifting a few percent either way, while SATA has been the erratic one, down one window and up the next. Flat is not falling: months of sideways mean the market has found an expensive level it is comfortable with, not that relief is on the way. But it does mean waiting on a drive has not been punished lately the way waiting on memory has, which is worth knowing if your timeline can flex.
| Segment | 1 month | 3 months | 6 months | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDR5 | +6.3% | +10.2% | +8.7% | +360.4% |
| DDR4 | +0% | +0% | -5.3% | +191.5% |
| NVMe SSD | +2.1% | +1.4% | +3.1% | +139.5% |
| SATA SSD | +2.9% | -5.3% | +14.7% | +189.9% |
Scroll the table sideways to see every period.
Last computed August 27, 2026 · median-based · per-period fairness subsets · full methodology
A decade of falling prices, and what broke
For most of the past decade, storage was the PC part you could count on getting cheaper. Our longest-tracked drives go back to 2016, and the shape is one long slide punctuated by pauses: flash got denser, competition got meaner, and price per gigabyte fell almost every year. By mid-2023 the slide had produced numbers that look unreal today. Samsung's 990 Pro 2TB, the enthusiast default, sold for $159 in July 2023. This April it peaked at $499.
That long slide is also the honest reason to believe prices will eventually come down: the underlying trend of flash getting cheaper to make has not gone away, and the 2017-18 NAND shortage resolved the same way, with supply catching up and prices falling for years afterward. But "eventually" did a lot of work in that sentence last time. The rebalance took well over a year, and it started when fabs shifted, not when buyers got impatient. If your build needs a drive this year, you're shopping this market.
(A note on interest: MemRadar earns affiliate commissions on purchases through our links, so "buy now" pays us and "wait" doesn't. The chart below is the same either way. We would rather you buy right than buy today.)
How to judge a specific drive today
Market trends will not tell you whether the drive in your cart is priced fairly. The same three checks from our RAM guide apply, and every SSD page here runs them for you.
First, the drive's own recent history. A drive near its lowest price of the past few months is fairly priced for this market, whatever that number would have looked like in 2023. The "good time to buy" indicator on each page does this math against the 90-day average.
Second, price per gigabyte against the segment. For storage this is the metric that matters most, and every drive page shows it against the current median for its class. Meaningfully under the median, the drive is doing something right. Meaningfully over, and you are paying for a name or a heatsink.
Third, cheap lately or cheap historically. The price analysis on every page distinguishes these, because in this market nearly every drive is near its recent low while sitting far above where it traded two years ago. Both facts are true, and you should know both before deciding how to feel about the purchase.
Two storage-specific checks on top. Use the capacity switcher on any drive page to compare the 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB versions of the same line: the best price-per-gigabyte badge marks the value pick, and the sweet spot is often not the size you assumed. And do not pay for speed you will not feel: Gen5 drives carry a premium and run hot, Gen4 covers gaming and general use comfortably, and the difference in price buys real capacity instead.
Drives closest to their all-time lows right now
- Bestoss 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD PCIe 3.0 2280 $143.98 at its all-time low of $143.98
- KingSpec 2TB 2.5-inch SATA III Internal $197.97 at its all-time low of $197.97
- Fikwot FN960 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe Gen4 $445.99 3.7% above its all-time low of $429.99
- SIX X4000 1TB M.2 SSD PCIe Gen3x4 NVME $149.99 25% above its all-time low of $119.99
- Silicon Power 2TB SSD 3D NAND A55 SLC $219.97 29% above its all-time low of $169.99
- Samsung SSD 870 EVO SATA III 2.5” 8TB $3,498.95 41% above its all-time low of $2,479.99
Ranked by how close the current price sits to each drive's all-time low. Updates automatically.
Honest answers to the questions people actually ask
Will SSD prices drop in 2026?
The trend does not show a drop underway. NVMe has been flat since spring, SATA is choppy rather than falling, and nothing in the windows points down. History says NAND oversupply eventually returns and prices slide, but the last cycle took over a year to turn.
Is SATA still the budget pick?
Less than it used to be. SATA's traditional price advantage has narrowed, and on several capacities NVMe now matches or beats it per gigabyte. It flips by capacity, so check the live medians on our listing pages before defaulting to either. Where SATA still earns its keep is older systems and bulk secondary storage.
Is QLC a smart way to save?
Often yes, with eyes open. QLC drives run cheaper per gigabyte and are fine for game libraries, media, and general storage. The trade is slower sustained writes and lower rated endurance, which matters for heavy workloads and scratch disks. In a market where every gigabyte costs more, the QLC discount is real money.
Should I buy a used SSD?
We would skip it. Flash wears with writes, a used drive's remaining endurance is invisible unless the seller shares SMART data, warranties rarely transfer, and used prices have inflated along with new ones. Used RAM can be a fine deal. Used flash is a gamble with your data.
How current is this page?
Prices and the list above update automatically several times a day, and the page regenerates daily. The market narrative gets reviewed when conditions change meaningfully. If the climb resumes or the old slide finally returns, this page will say so.
Prices on this page update automatically every few hours. Page last regenerated: August 28, 2026.