Flash storage has doubled in price over the last few months, says Phison: 'All the capacity is sold out'

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At least memory prices are fi- oh, wait.

Seagate FireCuda 540 SSD Phison E26 controller
(Image credit: Future)

While the memory price crisis (yep, that phrase will catch on) is clearly visible, the potentially looming SSD price crisis is less so. Checking Amazon, Newegg, and other sites reveals a whole host of RAM kits at ridiculously high prices, but SSDs seem pretty stable. Yet Phison's CEO Khein-Seng Pua says that in "only three months", NAND prices have doubled (via Digitimes). What gives?

Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, that's the cost of NAND, not the cost of an SSD. Phison buys NAND (flash) chips from suppliers—the three big ones being Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—and then uses them to make their own enterprise SSDs or to make SSDs for other customers.

Corsair MP700 Elite SSD with its packaging on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)

"They try to improve. What they can do right now is improve the cycle time, improve the EO rate to gain a few percent of output. What we need is a 2x, 3x of output. This is not going to happen [in] 2026 because this requires new fabs."

Phison says it has "secured six NAND companies; the flash supply is a LTA ['long-term availability', presumably] commitment." In other words, the company says it should be fine for supply, for now.

This isn't the first we're hearing of storage prices rising and supplies being low or, as it seems, nonexistent right now. Adata's chairman, Chen Libai, recently said that supplies of all major memory and storage technologies are now in short supply, and we've even seen that HDDs are facing a shortage as some customers are turning to those in lieu of out-of-stock SSDs. We've also seen Sandisk confirm "unprecedented demand for every capacity in our portfolio" before raising its HDD prices

On the volatile memory front, we've even seen a retailer restricting RAM purchases. We're nowhere near that point with flash storage, yet, but with the scale of investments being made in AI servers around the world and with companies talking about completely dry stocks, it's not too far out there to suspect steep RAM prices and low stocks could be just around the bend, "LTA commitments" or otherwise. Grab 'em while you can, I guess.

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Jacob Fox
Jacob Fox
Hardware Writer

Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob's led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world's #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It's definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.

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