SSD Prices Could Spike After WD Reports Contamination Of 6.5 Billion GB Of NAND Chips

© Provided by Geek Culture

Just as you thought PC component prices hitting an all-time was bad, it’s possibly going to get worse with this piece of unfortunate SSD mishap.

© Provided by Geek Culture

Following reports of a manufacturing contamination at a Kioxia plant in Japan, Western Digital (WD) said that it has lost 6.5 billion gigabytes of flash storage. The issue was discovered in January 2022 and affected BiCS 3D NAND flash memory.

This news is significant as Western Digital and Kioxia supply about 30 percent of the NAND flash market. Compounding the issue is the rising prices of RAM, global chip storage, and scarcity of GPUs as well.

PC gaming and building have become sort of a luxury these days and it doesn’t look like the issue is about to abate. Our biggest concern is that these prices might stay elevated years after the situation has been sorted out.

© Provided by Geek Culture

While alternatives do exist in the form of Seagate or AORUS SSDs, we can’t expect those prices to hold steady amid a shortage.

Plus, these days even the PS5 demands for top of the line SSDs to satisfy ever-growing game install sizes so much so that an SSD can cost twice the price of the console.

Our poor wallet.

The post SSD Prices Could Spike After WD Reports Contamination Of 6.5 Billion GB Of NAND Chips appeared first on Geek Culture.