There’s never been a better time to buy an SSD for your PC or PS5
If you’ve seen our daily deals coverage or the recent Amazon Prime Day sales fervor, you might have noticed we’re witnessing the lowest solid-state drive prices we’ve ever seen.
It wasn’t that long ago that choosing an SSD over a hard disk was a pricey endeavor best left to deep-pocketed PC builders and hardcore enthusiasts. Now? You’ll find an SSD in every PS5, Xbox Series X, and most computers, and if this price trend continues, I won’t be surprised if they start getting thrown in as free gifts when you buy a desk or bookshelf from Ikea.
How much of a price drop are we talking? Consider this: the bestselling internal SSD on Amazon is a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro, which is selling for around $120 and has fallen 60 percent in price just since this time last year — accounting for most of the 76 percent drop over its lifetime. As for its younger, hotter, and faster-running sibling, the 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (the highest-ranked seller on Amazon among newer SSDs)? At $150, it’s dropped about 58 percent since it launched in November 2022 at $309.
Considering the falling prices of SSDs, every PS5 owner should at least consider adding storage to their console. You may value the extra space later. Image: Tom Warren / The Verge
It’s a breath of fresh air to see valuable and essential tech for us gamers and PC builders actually get cheaper, as it feels like lots of devices and streaming services have only been slowly creeping upwards in price over time. Besides, more devices need more SSDs than ever now, with many consoles, laptops, and desktops offering a second M.2 slot you can fill, and handheld consoles like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally begging for more space.
Compared to traditional hard drives, even a fairly basic M.2 NVMe SSD is lightning-fast and more than adequate for the average user. Now, however, we’ve been watching prices drop steadily for weeks on some of the fastest and most sought-after SSDs in the market, and the downward trajectory may yet go further.
Prices are bottoming out because major chip manufacturers like Samsung are overstocked with inventory and not enough demand, with prices tumbling as a result. According to a Reuters report, those prices are not expected to bottom out until later this quarter and possibly not recover until next year.
So it’s a great time to share the best deals we’re seeing with you.
Amazon prices for one of the most popular SSDs it sells have fallen off a cliff compared to late-2021. Getting a $200, well, anything for $60 is a friggin’ steal. Screenshot: Camelcamelcamel.com
Sticking with Samsung for a sec, the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 1TB SSD, with its sequential read speeds of 6,400 MB/s, is more than fast enough for use in a PlayStation 5, and adding one more than doubles the console’s usable 667GB of built-in space. It’s now selling with a heatsink — which Sony says the PS5 requires — for just $79.99 at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. That’s $70 cheaper than it was last July and $170 less than it sold for in the fall of 2021. For even more storage, the 2TB 980 Pro with a heatsink is currently $139.99 ($130 cheaper than it was just a year ago) at Best Buy.
We’ve covered previous deals on those exact drives many times before, but these latest discounts blow the doors off the old sale prices. Yes, they recently dipped even lower during Amazon Prime Day ($69.99 for the 1TB / $99.99 for the 2TB), but we’re hovering around all-time lows.
Even the newer Samsung 990 Pro, which is overkill for a PS5 but well suited for a top-tier gaming desktop, can be had with 1TB of storage for just $79.99 at Amazon and Best Buy — a price you might have thought unthinkable when it launched just eight months ago for around $100 more.
But what’s really shocking is the 2TB version of Samsung’s 990 Pro, which is currently $149.99 at Amazon and even briefly sold for $129.99 on a Prime Day Lightning Deal. Even without that added time-sensitive discount, today’s price for the 2TB is about $163 less than what Amazon was charging in December before prices were cast down a well.
Kudos to those who nabbed that Lightning Deal on a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro during Prime Day. You done good, kid. Screenshot: Camelcamelcamel.com
Stepping out of Samsung’s world for a bit, the Western Digital WD_Black SN850 1TB (complete with heatsink) that PlayStation’s lead system architect Mark Cerny uses for his own PS5 is selling for $89.99 at Amazon and Best Buy (which is $150 off its original price), and the 2TB version is close to its all-time low at $149.99 ($130 off from when Amazon first sold it in September).
Hell, even the Adata XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1TB I bought myself a couple months ago is now just $59.99 (about $68 less than when it first went on sale) at Best Buy and Amazon. It felt like a great value when I got mine for around $80 in March, but it dropped to a ridiculously low $54.99 just yesterday and during Prime Day — which is even $10 cheaper than the 512GB model that’s mostly unavailable now (because who wants that at this point anyway).
The S70 Blade is a very good value for a cost-conscious PS5 owner looking to expand their console storage, as it also comes in 2TB and 4TB sizes. The 2TB is just $109.99 at Best Buy and Amazon after a $60 drop in six months. The extra-spacious 4TB model is $279.99 at Amazon and Best Buy (this thing still cost over $500 just two months ago).
“Hello? Is this the Camelcamelcamel.com police? Hi, yes, I’d like to report a murder?” Screenshot: Camelcamelcamel.com
You can see more general pricing trends on PCPartPicker, and it shows us how 2TB NVMe SSDs have had the most precipitous drops — which tracks pretty well with some of the prices covered above.
Another example: the extra-fast WD_Black SN850X with a heatsink (which reaches read speeds up to 7,300 MB/s) is selling for just $119.99 (more than 60 percent off MSRP). But this drive also comes in 1TB and even 4TB capacities — the former of which is just $69.99 (the same 60 percent off as the 2TB), and the latter is $269.99 (albeit without a heatsink). The SN850X is one of the fastest drives you can buy right now for a PC or PS5, and the 4TB model gives it an edge in storage capacity over Samsung’s competing 990 Pro. It also helps that Western Digital’s 4TB drive currently costs a whopping $430 less than it did when it launched less than a year ago.
The pricing of 2TB NVMe drives has dropped a little steeper than 1TB models. Screenshot: PCPartPicker
2023 has not been kind at all to the 2TB WD_Black SN850X, and I’m kind of alright with that. Screenshot: Camelcamelcamel.com
But the pricing trend isn’t solely for the benefit of PC and PS5 gamers, as even Seagate’s SSD expansion cards for the proprietary slot on the Xbox Series X / S consoles finally received price cuts back in May (even if they’re still overpriced compared to standard drives). And Western Digital now offers Seagate a little competition with its more affordable WD_Black line for Xbox. Getting 512GB of add-on storage for $79.99 or 1TB for $149.99 sounds like a bit of a rip-off compared to standard NVMe prices above, but if you own an Xbox, it’s unfortunately the price to pay for plug-and-play convenience.
It thankfully stings slightly less for owners of Valve’s Steam Deck or Asus’ ROG Ally. If you’re looking to be brave and open up your handheld to upgrade the stock SSD, you can get the Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVMe 2230 SSD for $109.95 at Amazon. This tiny drive cost $159.99 before its price suddenly dipped hard back in mid-May. The 2230 size of SSDs hasn’t fallen quite as much as larger models since they’re a little more specialized, but a $50 price drop is sizable as it is.
Now, at this point, you may also be asking yourself, “What about those of us not yet using M.2 slots in our older PCs?” Well, I’m happy to inform you that the deals also include older, slower SSDs like the Samsung 870 Evo 2TB and Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5-inch SATA drives — which both remain in the top-13 of drives currently being bought on Amazon (remember, not everyone is at the bleeding-edge). The Samsung 2TB is selling for $109.99 (a far cry from its original peak of $299.99 back in late 2021), and the Crucial 1TB is just $47.99 after first starting life in 2019 at $259.99.
If you want to really maximize your storage with a 2.5-inch SSD, that same Crucial model is also available in 4TB capacity for $206.99 ($143 off), though it went as low as $164.99 on a Prime Day Lightning Deal.
These drives max out around 500MB/s write speeds, so their days of winning speed tests are long over, but it still beats a spinning disk.
The Crucial 1TB MX500’s all-time price history started early with a steep drop before staying fairly consistent for years, but it fell quite a bit further in 2023. Screenshot: Camelcamelcamel.com
Overall, it’s become the best time to buy all kinds of solid-state drives, whether for gaming, productivity, or both. The prices may continue dipping a little further, though it’s bound to bottom out somewhere.
A note: while this trend is great for us buyers, be sure to keep your guard up and know what you’re buying is the real deal from a reputable seller. For example, one of our tips for buying tech (or anything, really) on Amazon is to be sure it’s shipped and sold by Amazon.com — or at least fulfilled by Amazon and sold by a reputable third party like the product’s manufacturer. The world of tech is sometimes exploited by scammers with some fishy listings.
Buying storage may not be the most exciting part of building a PC (yes, I know many obsess over which fancy RTX graphics card they’re spending big money on), but it’s essential. And, frankly, getting the right amount of storage for your needs helps avoid having to play the worst game of all time: constantly moving or deleting gigantic 60, 80, and 100GB-plus games to make room for the next one you’re downloading. It’s the inventory management minigame from hell.
Source: The Verge
