Cost of SSDs and RAM to rise, reports suggest
The price of SSDs has been unprecedently low in recent months with sales of the flash-based storage spiking as a result. We’ve seen the effects of this in our data recovery lab recently: the steady growth of SSD data recovery jobs we’ve witnessed over the past few years gathered pace towards the end of 2018, and continued into 2019. This trend, though, may not continue if recent reports are to be believed.
In the middle of July 2019, various sources started suggesting that the cost of NAND flash memory was set to increase by between 10 and 15%. The cost of NAND is known to fluctuate regularly, with falling demand coupled with increased production having led to a drop in price last year.
It would seem that this fall in price resulted in increased demand and that this is now going to result in the cost of NAND flash memory, and also SSDs, increasing.
Additionally, reports have indicated that DRAM modules are going to become more expensive, meaning that the cost of RAM is likely to increase, too.
In short, the cost of memory and flash-based storage is expected to increase in the coming months. It should be added that this has not been confirmed and is by no means guaranteed. Nevertheless, if you’ve been planning on investing in an SSD or some extra RAM. Now might be the time to do it.
The difference between memory and storage
Perhaps you’re looking at the previous paragraph and think we’ve made a mistake. After all, the terms memory and data storage are often interchangeable. This, though, is inaccurate.
Storage is, literally, where we store all of our files. Memory is what is used to display them and any changes we make in real-time. Whenever we save or open a file, we’re using our device’s storage media. When we’re then editing the file, we’re using our device’s memory. An SSD is a piece of storage media whereas RAM is memory. Both are vital to the way our devices function, but for very different reasons.
Will this make other technology more expensive?
We’d presume that it will. RAM is used in most computing devices and flash-memory (which always uses NAND) is present in virtually all mobile devices as well as many laptops and desktops.
Only time will tell but, should DRAM modules or NAND memory become more expensive, it’s only rational to assume that the cost of the devices that use them will also increase.