Storage crisis price index April 2026



Source: www.3dcenter.org/artikel/speicherkrise-preisindex-april-2026

 

You missed the massive HDD space price increases for offline storage, this AI nonsense has put a big hit on HDD and space prices.
I am looking at a 150% price increase over the last 2 years. Since having duplicate HHD for backups means always buying 2 drives of the same model so the upfront cost is massive.

I am thinking that many people will soon start to slow down their download habits and focus that space on their own personal files, pics and videos.

Cell phones have bigger storage these days but this means larger backups and sorting out thousands of useless pictures and videos.
I am still from a time where you composed every shot since you only had 24 or so Film shots lol.

 

HDD price for WD Ultrastar 26TB went from 400 to 800 in a 3 month. Unbelievable!

 

Dammit, i planned on 2 x 64GB kit for my next build, guess i'll get the lube ready

 

I hadn't anticipated such a price increase at the time, but I'm glad I bought my new computer in September 2025.

I never win the lottery, but at least I got lucky this time. lol

 

RAM -> SSD -> HDD :/

but it seems demand and prices heavily fluctuate because datacenters aren't being build,
negative prognoses say prices may jump 5X later, but also positive prognoses say prices may fall back due to lack of immediate demand

 

RAM too, due to the AI bubble.
Even DDR4.

Here is some "prediction"

 

Not playing their games... They can suck it. The semi-conductor industry has chosen to keep consumer prices high in order to make up differences for breaks given to corporations in record numbers. Blaming it on "AI" or "scarcity of materials", or totally unrelated wars in other countries, etc, is a ruse. I will not be $$$ gouged for the entertainment of stock holders and the industry at large. When they finally figure out that consumers will not be responsible for making up their losses the prices will come down. Only then will I look into the couple of SSD upgrades I was contemplating before all this b.s...

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2026 at 11:44 PM

When we own nothing we will be able to use online ram to power our subscription ai software.

 

Yeah, even HDDs now. Fuck AI datacenters. And then bomb 'em with napalm.

I'm building a new PC, or rather upgrading parts, tonight. Last time was 2020 post-lockdown and I went ultra cheap: Intel i3 9100F (4 miserable cores). I still must consider myself lucky for buying 2x16GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM back then. Way more than the CPU could handle, 2400Mhz, but the latter were already rare so they costed only a few euros less.

So this time I chose the best mid-low budget CPU for those DDR4 3200, which is the Intel 12600KF, which supports DDR4/DDR5. Add a cheap but decent mobo and it will fly compared to my current 9100F.

I can't even upgrade yet my SSD and even HDD (well, I also bougt a cheap laptop, had priority). And don't ask me about new GPU or I'll cry


PS. the best part is I was able to buy a cheap laptop but still with 16GB because I found a great discount buying it WITHOUT Windows 11
That holds my good track of Microsoft shit I've ever bought at one MS-DOS 5 in 1994

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2026 at 9:44 PM

And yeah, this is what I heard and read everywhere. In general, not only DDR4. There's no improvement at sight in all year. AT LEAST

 

Ram, nand, GPU ... and more
In fact, the whole market is going crazy.

I was searching for a second hand scooter to avoid using my car ... it was almost the price of my car itself
So i just let down.

Time for those speculators to feel what happens when ppl stop buying their artificial bubbles

 

or we're being forced towards adopting cloud storage

 

Yeah, it sucks. I've ordered a 2tb SDD for my laptop from Amazon couple of weeks ago. It was a good price, but a week after the purchase I got refund for no reason and then when I tried to reorder again I saw that the price went up like 80 bucks in just a week. That was like 1/4-1/5 spike from the original price. I don't know if they were out of stock or something or predicted the price spike and thus canceled the purchase, not sure if they can do that, but they did. Anyway, I found another place, still a bit higher from the Amazon price, like 15 bucks or something.

 

The problem lies in the long term contracts. You (a big company) want to buy RAM, you can't get contracts from Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron unless you commit to buying into the 2030s by now. And like clockwork, every quarter, those memory manufacturers issue notices that they are going to raise contract prices for future production the following quarter.. leading to customers signing even more contracts overpriced contracts in panic, which in turn leads to even more severe shortages.. allowing memory makers to raise prices and contract durations once more the following quarter.

Memory has always had a serious cartel problem. Also like clockwork, every five years or so, someone in the cartel rats out the others and gets off comparatively cheaply (fines of less than a billion €/$). Has been the case since the late 1990s (and probably before then too) until now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

 

Wont be upgrading until this is back to normal. Wont be renting or streaming either. They must be losing big money from the ordinary consumer markets.

 

Unless these billionaire tech bros who pretend to be astronauts in dick shaped rockets & their trillion dollar monopolies are broken apart along with banning all forms of lobbying in politics & the normies stop eating up all the goyslop, the common man is absolutely screwed.... I do have hope for Gen Z.

 

The best thing to do is build your own chip company and then undercut the competition.

 

Oh, great idea, I was just thinking what should I do with 5 billion dollars that casually lay in my pocket. I was thinking about buying chips and watch a movie but now when you said about building a chip company I might do just that since it's that easy

 

I was referring to the previous speaker who believes the following:

Hello @Axvap, it's really simple: instead of a bag of chips, you buy a ski mask, disguise yourself, and break into the East German tech company. You either steal the blueprints or hijack a container full of finished DDR5 RAM modules...!

For anyone reading this, this isn't meant to be an incitement to crime, but pure satire.