Better than hoarding gold bars? The "value" of hard drives and memory modules skyrockets

 In a shopping mall in Changsha, consumers are selecting solid-state drives.

"Yesterday, the price of a solid-state drive was still 650 yuan, but today it has risen to 680 yuan. Memory modules are even more exaggerated. A few months ago, a 32G set of memory modules cost just over 800 yuan, but now it's directly over 2000 yuan!" On January 12th, Xiao Liu, a student from Hunan University, held the quotation record on his phone and looked at the new price tag of the merchant with a confused expression on his face. "I didn't expect prices to rise every day. The longer I wait, the more expensive it gets.".

Recently, the frenzied market situation in the storage market has shaken people's perceptions, with some even joking, "Buying hard drives and memory modules beats hoarding gold bars." On January 12, a reporter's visit revealed that since the end of last year, the prices of memory modules and solid-state drives (SSDs) have entered a "frenzied surge mode." The "value" of memory modules has generally doubled, with some high-end models seeing an increase of over 200%, and mainstream brands' 1TB hard drive prices have risen by 30%-80%. Prices are changing daily, and popular products are "hard to come by." "I can't understand it, and I can't keep up!" Mr. Duan, the head of Game Audio and Video Digital (Changsha Kaifu Store), showed the reporter the recent quotation ledger, which recorded a significant upward trend in price fluctuations. "In November last year, our store sold Western Digital 1TB mobile SSDs for 385 yuan and 2TB for 428 yuan. Now, they are sold for 691 yuan and 758 yuan respectively; the SanDisk E30 2TB mobile SSD also rose from 829 yuan in May last year to 1489 yuan. As for memory modules, the 32G Acer Predator DDR5 memory module, which sold for over 700 yuan six months ago, now costs 2500 yuan.".

Mr. Duan admitted that this was the most intense surge in prices he had ever encountered since starting his career. "In the past, price adjustments were made quarterly. Now, we receive price increase notices from upstream manufacturers every few days. Sometimes, we have to change the price tags twice in a single day, and the price fluctuations of memory modules are even more frequent than those of solid-state drives," Mr. Duan said. "With such significant price fluctuations, we dare not stock up excessively. Therefore, we rarely put a large quantity of stock on the shelves in our store. Customers have to confirm the latest quotation and inventory before purchasing."

Regarding the surge in prices of mobile hard drives, the staff member at the ROG store in Changsha IFS Guojin Center shared similar sentiments. She told reporters that the Samsung T7 1TB mobile solid-state drive now sells for nearly 1,000 yuan in her store, whereas it was only priced at over 700 yuan in October last year, representing a price increase of over 30%. Memory modules also began to rise in price in October last year. Taking the Samsung 16GB DDR5 5600 as an example, it sold for 462 yuan in August last year, but its price rose to 1,256 yuan in January this year.

Online channels are also in high demand. Reporters found through inquiries on platforms such as Taobao and JD.com that 1TB mobile solid-state drives (SSDs) are generally priced between 600 and 750 yuan, and the prices of mainstream brand memory modules have generally increased by 2-3 times compared to last year. Taking Lenovo's official flagship store as an example, its popular 2TB capacity mobile SSD F508 has been in tight supply for a long time. The customer service of Taobao's Lenovo official flagship store stated, "This hard drive was priced at 368 yuan last August, but now it is priced at 639 yuan. It may be restocked, but the specific arrival time is uncertain." Supply and demand imbalance, with the upward trend expected to continue in 2026. According to the "2025-2030 Solid-State Drive Market Development Status Survey and Supply and Demand Pattern Analysis and Forecast Report" by Zhongyan Puhua Industry Research Institute, the global SSD market will reach a scale of over 280 billion yuan in 2030, with the Chinese market expected to exceed 80 billion yuan, accounting for more than 30% of the total. Data released by market research firm Counterpoint Research shows that storage chip prices have soared by 40% to 50% in the fourth quarter of 2025.

"The surge in prices is not unique to Changsha, but rather a concentrated reflection of the imbalance between supply and demand in the global storage industry," industry insiders pointed out. The primary reason for the price hikes is the soaring cost of upstream NAND flash memory chips. As the core component of mobile solid-state drives (SSDs), NAND accounts for over 90% of material costs. Leading companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix have continuously adjusted their prices multiple times in 2025, and the cost pressure has been fully transmitted to the end market. Secondly, the mismatch in production capacity has exacerbated supply shortages. Currently, the storage market is experiencing an upward price cycle due to the explosion in demand for AI computing power. Storage manufacturers are shifting their advanced production capacity to high-profit areas such as high-bandwidth memory, resulting in a continuous squeeze on the production capacity of consumer-grade mobile SSDs.

Regarding future price trends, industry research firm Bernstein predicts that the prices of memory and solid-state drives will continue to rise throughout 2026, especially in the first quarter, where the quarter-on-quarter increase may reach 20% to 30%, and are expected to remain high throughout the year. The turning point may occur at the end of 2026, with the upward trend potentially slowing down significantly from the fourth quarter onwards.