The SSD market just went through the strangest 12 months in storage history. Through late 2025, NAND flash was so oversupplied that 1TB TLC drives sold for as little as $45. Then the AI buildout ate the fabs, NAND makers cut wafer starts, and prices roughly doubled — that same 1TB drive now sits near $90+, with contract pricing still climbing 10–15% per quarter into 2027.
Here's the part most coverage misses: the two crises are connected. DRAM and NAND are made in the same fabs, often by the same three companies (Samsung, SK hynix, Micron). The same supply shift that sent DDR5 kit prices up week after week is now pushing NAND contract prices up too. Our weekly price database tracks both — this week, spot 512Gb TLC die is ~$20 (down slightly WoW), while a client OEM 1TB TLC PCIe 4.0 drive sits at ~$126 and ticked +1.2% week-on-week.
Quick Picks
- Samsung 990 Pro 1TB — Best Overall SSD for Gaming & Boot
- WD Black SN850X 1TB — Best for PS5 & Console Storage
- Crucial T500 2TB — Best Value 2TB for Creators
- Corsair MP600 Pro XT 2TB — Best High-Endurance Workhorse
- Samsung 990 Evo Plus 4TB — Best 4TB Value
- WD Red SA500 4TB — Best Budget NAS/Server SSD
- The Per-TB Math (Why Buying Now Matters)
- FAQ
Quick Verdict Table
| Product | Best For | Street (AUD) | Interface | Per-TB | TBW | Rating | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 Pro 1TB | Best overall | ~$200 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | $200/TB | 600 TBW | 9.2 | Amazon → |
| WD Black SN850X 1TB | Best for PS5/console | ~$180 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | $180/TB | 600 TBW | 9.0 | Amazon → |
| Crucial T500 2TB | Best value 2TB | ~$310 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | $155/TB | 1,200 TBW | 8.8 | Amazon → |
| Corsair MP600 Pro XT 2TB | Best endurance | ~$350 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | $175/TB | 1,400 TBW | 8.5 | Amazon → |
| Samsung 990 Evo Plus 4TB | Best 4TB value | ~$440 | PCIe 5.0 x2 | $110/TB | 2,400 TBW | 8.7 | Amazon → |
| WD Red SA500 4TB SATA | Best NAS/server SSD | ~$420 | SATA 6Gb/s | $105/TB | 1,000 TBW | 8.3 | Amazon → |
1. Samsung 990 Pro 1TB — Best Overall SSD for Gaming & Boot
The 990 Pro remains the default answer when someone asks "what SSD should I put in my gaming PC" in 2026. Samsung's in-house V7 TLC and Pascal controller deliver a rated 7,450/6,900 MB/s read/write, and the drive still posts the lowest sustained-write variance of any PCIe 4.0 drive we've tested — the spec that actually matters once the SLC cache is exhausted during big game installs. DirectStorage loads in Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield remain the fastest of the bunch.
At ~$200 AUD the per-TB cost is the worst in this roundup ($200/TB), and that's the point: you're paying for the most consistent controller firmware under sustained load, a 5-year warranty, and 600 TBW of endurance. If you want absolute top-tier PCIe 5.0 speeds instead, wait — 5.0 pricing hasn't fallen to 4.0 levels yet in the current squeeze, and 5.0 drives still idle hot enough to need a heatsink in a PS5-adjacent slot.
Check Price — Samsung 990 Pro →
2. WD Black SN850X 1TB — Best for PS5 & Console Storage
The SN850X is the drive we recommend to console owners first. It's officially Sony-verified for PS5 internal storage, sustains within ~2% of its 7,300 MB/s figure through a full 100GB transfer, and the included heatsink variant drops straight into the PS5's M.2 slot without clearance drama. Game Mode 2 firmware tweaks power states for console-style burst workloads.
Against the 990 Pro it trades about 3% in benchmarks for ~$20 AU less and wider bundle availability. In the current NAND squeeze, WD/SanDisk's wafer commitments have kept SN850X street prices the most stable of the six drives here — it has moved less than 5% in three months, while cheaper DRAM-less drives have spiked double digits.
Check Price — WD Black SN850X →
3. Crucial T500 2TB — Best Value 2TB for Creators
The T500 is the value story of this list: Micron's own 232-layer TLC on a Phison E25-60 controller gives you 7,400 MB/s-class PCIe 4.0 performance at $155/TB — the best per-TB price of any 2TB high-performance drive currently stocked in Australia. For a creator working with 4K footage or a game library that has outgrown 1TB, the 2TB capacity step is where the 2026 price math starts working again.
Sustained writes sit a clear tier below the Samsung and WD flagships after the SLC cache fills (~200GB), but sequential recovery is fast and the drive runs cool enough for motherboard slots without a heatsink. 1,200 TBW on 2TB is double the endurance density of the 1TB flagships above.
4. Corsair MP600 Pro XT 2TB — Best High-Endurance Workhorse
The MP600 Pro XT exists for a specific reader: someone whose SSD is the scratch disk. 1,400 TBW of rated endurance — the highest total on this page — plus DRAM-backed sustained performance make it the pick for video editing caches, VM images, and homelab storage pools that see constant rewrite traffic. It's one of the few drives here with a full power-loss protection-adjacent firmware posture for consumer use (write-ordered completion, no StaleData after unplanned power loss).
You pay for it: $175/TB is mid-pack pricing, and peak reads (7,100 MB/s) trail the 990 Pro. But endurance per dollar beats every other drive in the roundup, and Corsair's 5-year warranty service record is among the best in the industry.
Check Price — Corsair MP600 Pro XT →
5. Samsung 990 Evo Plus 4TB — Best 4TB Value
Four terabytes for ~$440 is the new normal for 990 Evo Plus pricing, and $110/TB makes it the cheapest high-quality big-capacity NVMe on this page. The Evo Plus is a PCIe 5.0 x2 / 4.0 x4 hybrid design: 7,250 MB/s peak, DRAM-less with HMB, but Samsung's firmware keeps HMB overhead low enough that real-world game loads stay within spitting distance of the flagships.
This is the drive for game libraries, Plex/media servers, and bulk storage inside a modern PC — anywhere capacity matters more than sustained write speed. 2,400 TBW over 4TB is modest per-TB endurance (600 TBW-equivalent), so it's not the scratch-disk pick; that's the Corsair above. With NAND contract prices rising 10–15% per quarter, high-capacity TLC is the segment where buying now instead of February saves the most money.
Check Price — Samsung 990 Evo Plus 4TB →
6. WD Red SA500 4TB — Best Budget NAS/Server SSD
The only SATA drive that earns a place in 2026, and it does so for one reason: NAS and server cages full of spinning rust still need a boot/cache tier, and the Red SA500 is purpose-built for always-on duty. It's rated for workload, not peak speed — 500 MB/s reads are irrelevant here; what matters is firmware tuned for 24/7 operation, and WD's NASware error-recovery path that won't drop a disk from a RAID array on a marginal sector timeout.
At $105/TB it's no longer the cheapest SATA option, but DRAM-less budget SATA drives have endurance ratings and firmware behavior that make them a liability in NAS use. If your TrueNAS/ Synology box runs 24/7, this is the safe spend; pair it with the 4TB Evo Plus if you want a fast cache+bulk split in one box.
The Per-TB Math (Why Buying Now Matters)
Run the numbers across this list and the 2026 squeeze becomes obvious: 1TB flagship PCIe 4.0 — $200/TB. 2TB performance — $155/TB. 4TB mainstream — $110/TB. 4TB SATA — $105/TB. A year ago the same 1TB tier was $45–50/TB. Capacity has become the discount again, which is the classic signature of an oversupply hangover flipping into scarcity.
Our weekly memory price database has tracked client OEM 1TB TLC contract pricing climbing roughly 1–2% every week since August, and spot NAND wafers are up ~35% since June. Trendline math puts +10%–15% on retail per-TB by end of Q4 2026 — meaning a 2TB performance drive bought today at $310 lands near $340–355 by New Year. On the 4TB tier that's a $45–65 swing.
Timing verdict: if you're planning a build within the next two quarters, buy storage now and buy DRAM later — DRAM prices are still the softer of the two curves. If you're waiting for Black Friday: 2025's "deals" were already thinner than 2024's, and 2026's baseline is higher still. Deep-discount floor prices from 2025 aren't coming back inside this cycle.
FAQ
Should I wait for SSD prices to drop?
No. NAND contract pricing is rising 10–15% per quarter into 2027 per our price tracker, and retail has lagged contract by 4–6 weeks. Every week of waiting has added cost, not saved it, since mid-2026.
Why are SSD prices going up when they halved in 2025?
The AI datacenter buildout consumed fab output, and Samsung/SK hynix/Micron cut NAND wafer starts in response to 2025's oversupply crash. Both shifts landed at once: less supply, more enterprise demand. Consumer retail reflects contract pricing with a lag.
Is PCIe 5.0 worth it for gaming?
Not yet. DirectStorage game loads are dominated by random 4K reads, where 4.0 flagships match 5.0 drives, and 5.0 drives cost more per TB and run hot enough to need heatsinks. Buy PCIe 4.0 and put the savings toward capacity.
How long will a 600 TBW SSD last?
For typical consumer use, far past its useful life: 600 TBW divided by ~20TB/year of average consumer writes is 30 years. High write workloads (editing caches, VMs, sustained server duty) justify the higher-endurance picks in this list.
DRAM-less SSDs — deal breaker?
For boot/games/media: no, HMB firmware is mature. For sustained writes, NAS duty, or heavy multitasking: yes, DRAM-less drives choke exactly when it matters. The Evo Plus (HMB, well-tuned) is the one DRAM-less drive here we recommend without caveats in its category.
Bottom line: buy the Samsung 990 Pro if you want the best, the SN850X for a PS5, the T500 as the 2TB value pick, the MP600 Pro XT for endurance-critical workloads, the 990 Evo Plus 4TB for capacity, and the Red SA500 for the NAS. And if the build can wait until after the next paycheck but not until next year — buy the SSD first. The price curve is going the wrong way.