M.2 Prices May be going up?

WallacEngineering · April 27, 2023

So I have been seeing articles that due to some NAND contamination incident a couple months leading to Exabtytes of NAND becoming useless; that NVMEs will be going back up in price in the second half of 2023. Anyone else heard about this?

I have a 2TB 980 Pro and 4TB P3 Plus in my cart right now, should I jump on them at these good prices ($129.99 and $219.99)?

NobleGamer · April 27, 2023

Interesting - Although I vaguely remember hearing something about that from one big chip maker like Micron quite a while ago, that didn't come up in SK Hynix's (#2 largest chip maker) latest earnings report: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/26/sk-hynix-reports-record-quarterly-operating-loss-forecasts-better-outlook.htm

Maybe that contamination was specific to one chip maker?

Back to your original question - Aside from the simple "If you need something and can afford it tha buy it" logic, you could weigh your tolerance for regretting that you could have payed less if prices go down versus regret that you pay more buying later. Look at pcpartpicker.com price trends for storage if you want to look at where prices were before recent oversupply.

I personally am not into the extra price of pcie 4 drives, but I also don't do video editing or code compiling that MIGHT benefit a bit from higher speeds that often come from pcie 4. So I'm more of a "970 Evo Plus or equivalent for a boot drive" and "something that's not trash tier random read/write for my games & docs" kind of guy.

All I know is that prices are low now, and in the next quarter anything can happen - I think its just a matter of how soon market prices react to whenever chip makers lower their output/supply (if they haven't already).

Also comes down to which armchair analyst you believe is best equipped with info and uses the most economic sense to do the impossible of predicting the future.

Example from article:

Quote

Sanjeev Rana, head of research for South Korea at CLSA, said he still expects further downside to SK Hynix's earnings in the second quarter.

Despite the expected supply cuts, memory chip prices in the second quarter could still fall between 10% to 20%, putting pressure on average selling prices and in turn, earnings for the company, he told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" on Wednesday.

Edited April 27, 2023 by NobleGamer
Added my personal recommendation

WallacEngineering · April 27, 2023

57 minutes ago, NobleGamer said:

I personally am not into the extra price of pcie 4 drives, but I also don't do video editing or code compiling that MIGHT benefit a bit from higher speeds that often come from pcie 4. So I'm more of a "970 Evo Plus or equivalent for a boot drive" and "something that's not trash tier random read/write for my games & docs" kind of guy.

Well I chose the 980 Pro for a boot drive because its not only extremely fast but also because it has 2GB of on-board Cache and when it comes to system responsiveness, Cache is actually quite a big deal. Also because its genuinely an amazing deal with most stores selling the same exact drive for $149.99.

The other drive can kinda be whatever as its mass storage but rather than 2 x 2TB M.2s (Intel 670p would be a fair bit less expensive), I figured a single 4TB drive would be better for both saving PCIE lanes and for general sanity reasons (not having to split up applications and files between two separate drives which can be kind of a nightmare at times).

Im in the process of upgrading from Ryzen 3700X to 7800X3D to compliment my new RX 7900-XTX but am in no rush, I figured I could build slowly, buying a few components at s time while waiting for AM5 boards and CPUs to drop in price a bit.

Here is the article that states there may be a price hike coming. Other articles can be found with similar findings if you Google search "NVME Prices Going Up".

https://www.techradar.com/news/quick-buy-an-ssd-now-before-a-potential-big-price-hike