- Nelson Duann, an exec in the SSD supply chain, has said: “The retail SSD market has almost disappeared”
- DDR5 RAM prices refuse to drop, although older memory modules are easing in price, but only very slightly
- System memory remains massively overpriced, and the same is true with many SSDs – and even hard drives are becoming more costly now
There’s more news about the PC component crisis, in terms of SSDs – and how the retail market for drives is seemingly disappearing – and RAM pricing too, which is showing signs of easing a little in some respects, the notable catch being that this isn’t the case with DDR5.
Tom’s Hardware interviewed Nelson Duann, who is a VP at Silicon Motion, one of the major forces in terms of SSD controller manufacturers, with the exec observing that: “The retail SSD market has almost disappeared.”
Duann elaborated: “The controllers we sell to module makers are now largely ending up in SSDs that are shipped to PC OEMs. The reason is that OEMs cannot obtain enough NAND directly from memory manufacturers, so they are increasingly sourcing SSDs from module makers instead.”
What Duann is saying is that with such a great demand from data centers these days, the retail market – meaning SSDs in boxes on shelves (virtual or physical) – is shrinking to the point of vanishing. Drives are going to data centers or PC makers, so the selection available to consumers is very much dwindling.
On the RAM front, Notebookcheck.net highlighted a report from 3D Center which examines component prices in the German retail market for June, including memory and SSDs.
The price of DDR5 RAM sticks remained essentially level compared to June (they were up 1%, so next to nothing). With DDR4 and DDR3, prices actually dropped a bit – to the tune of just under 7%. With SSDs, pricing pretty much stayed level, with a slight increase of just over 1%.
Analysis: harsh realities
