NAND prices are climbing too, not just RAM

How bad is the NAND shortage, really?

Kingston's own datacentre SSD lead has been direct about it in industry interviews this year. Their read is that the shortage keeps tightening before it eases, and their advice to anyone planning a storage upgrade is to do it now rather than wait for a better price that may not come.

Since NAND makes up the large majority of what an SSD actually costs to build, a price move at the chip level lands on the finished drive fast. This is not a retailer markup. It is happening upstream, at the fabs.

Why is storage getting swept into the same crisis as RAM?

Same root cause as the RAM shortage we wrote about on 14 September. AI data centres need enormous amounts of fast storage, and manufacturers are prioritising that high-margin demand over consumer drives.

India is already feeling it on the sales side, not just the price tag. CMR's own market review found domestic consumer SSD shipments down 34% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, with external drives down even more. Buyers are deferring upgrades exactly the way they did with RAM earlier in the year.

What makes this one slightly different from the RAM story is where the money is going. Enterprise and AI server storage is pulling ahead of smartphone storage as the biggest single draw on NAND supply for the first time, according to industry reporting. Consumer SSDs sit at the back of that queue, which is exactly why a value-focused budget drive can move in price faster than a premium one that a brand has already committed volume to.

From the floor

We are checking distributor price lists twice a week now instead of once, because listings that sat unchanged for months are moving inside a single week. Shelf prices here have held steady through September.

If this compounds the way RAM did, that will not hold indefinitely. If storage is on your list for a build any time soon, we would rather you bought it now than watched the same story repeat.

FAQ

Is this the same shortage as the RAM price hikes?

Related but not identical. Both trace back to AI data centre demand pulling manufacturing capacity toward server-grade memory and storage, away from consumer parts. RAM and NAND are made differently, but the underlying pressure is the same.

Should I buy an SSD now or wait for a sale?

Based on what manufacturers are saying publicly, waiting is more likely to cost you more than save you anything. There is no confirmed relief timeline for NAND, unlike a normal seasonal dip.

Will this push prebuilt PC prices up too?

Likely, since every prebuilt includes at least one SSD and usually RAM. We have not raised prices on current stock as of this post, but new stock coming in will reflect whatever the market looks like when we order it.

Does this affect HDDs too, or just SSDs?

Hard drives use a completely different technology and are not directly affected by the NAND shortage. If your build can use one for bulk storage alongside a smaller NVMe boot drive, that is one way to soften the impact on total cost.

Does a smaller capacity drive avoid the price hike?

Partly. A smaller drive costs less in absolute rupees, but the per-gigabyte price has moved up across every capacity we stock, not just the large ones. Buying small to dodge the shortage only helps your total bill, not the underlying rate.

Need storage for a build in the next few weeks? Check today's price against the link above before you decide to wait.

Related: Should you buy your PC before RAM prices climb more? · What ₹80,000 buys you in a gaming PC right now · Should you buy one RAM stick now, or two?

Geeta Rajput tracks vendor pricing, EOL notices and stock movement across the Nehru Place supply chain for Get Right PC. Published 21 September 2026.