Hand over proof of equity
When it was announced that at least one major cryptocurrency was moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, there were concerns that this could drive up SSD prices. This has never happened with GPUs, and SSD prices are still quite reasonable; except for PCIe 5.0 SSDs, but that’s always the case with new kits. Sadly, it looks like we’re going to start seeing price spikes, and as has been the case lately, you can blame AI. Samsung expects to increase the price of its enterprise-grade SSDs by 15%, but increased demand for AI storage means they will increase prices by 25%.
This will certainly hurt data centers immediately, but unfortunately it may impact consumer models in the near future. AI has impacted NVIDIA GPU pricing, as selling cards like the H100 is much more profitable than selling RTX cards, so we’re seeing demand for gaming GPUs continue to outpace supply. The same is likely to be true for consumer SSDs, as enterprise SSDs will have more attractive profit margins than consumer SSDs. Hopefully this won’t be felt right away, but you should expect to see prices stay the same at best; unfortunately, we’re more likely to see SSD prices slowly increase over the course of the year.