DRAM and NAND prices surge up to 98% in a single quarter, and it's about to get worse

Remember when a 1 TB SSD cost about $45? That was late 2025. The same drive now runs closer to $90.

Conventional DRAM contract prices surged 90-98% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, according to TrendForce. The original forecast had called for a 55-60% increase. The actual numbers blew past even the most bullish projections.

What’s driving the price explosion

Major memory manufacturers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, have been aggressively shifting their production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, the specialized DRAM that powers AI accelerators in data centers. When you redirect fabrication lines to produce HBM, those same lines can’t simultaneously churn out the conventional DRAM and NAND flash that goes into laptops, smartphones, and consumer SSDs.

NAND flash didn’t escape the carnage. Contract prices jumped 55-100% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, with Samsung reportedly hitting the peak end of that range.