We do not predict prices. This page shows where PS5 SSDs prices actually are, what our own daily snapshots have done, the supply-side facts we have cited, and a directional outlook that carries the date it applies to and the list of things that would prove it wrong. As of 2026-08-18 the floor is $109.25/TB across 138 in-stock listings.
Live figures updated · refreshed every 4-5 hours · outlook reviewed monthly
Cheapest in-stock listing at each capacity, and the heatsink split beside it. Cost per terabyte is the column that decides value; the sticker price is the one that decides whether you can afford it, and they do not rank the tiers the same way.
| Capacity | Listings | Cheapest | Per TB | Heatsink fitted | Bare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500GB | 2 | $96.99 | $193.98 | $193.98 | - |
| 1TB | 43 | $152.99 | $152.99 | $152.99 | $173.65 |
| 2TB | 55 | $224.99 | $112.50 | $112.50 | $157.76 |
| 4TB | 32 | $436.99 | $109.25 | $109.25 | $125.00 |
| 8TB | 6 | $1399.99 | $175.00 | $175.00 | $180.23 |
Right now the cheapest drive with a heatsink already fitted is at or below the cheapest bare drive per terabyte at 4 of 4 capacities where we stock both. The best cost per terabyte on the board is the 4TB tier at $109.25/TB. Both figures are recomputed on every page load - they are a live condition, not a rule.
Daily average price per TB across all tracked SATA enterprise HDDs, daily floor TB, tracked since 2026-07-08. Live data from the DatacenterDisk price tracker — updates every 2 hours. Window reflects the actual history in our database, not a modeled projection.
Every row says where its numbers came from. Reported rows are figures published by others, cited and dated - we did not measure them. Measured rows are our own series, computed from our daily snapshots. Mixing the two without saying which is which is how a page ends up citing itself.
| What | Then | Now | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our tracked PS5 SSDs floor, per TB | $106.87 (2026-07-08) | $109.25 (2026-08-18) | Measured by us |
As of 2026-08-18, 11 of 118 scored PS5 SSDs sit above their own recent typical level, 76 sit at the cheap end of their own record, and 31 are priced where they usually are. That distribution is the answer to “has waiting been working” - it is a count of badge states, not a price comparison.
In-stock only, cheapest per terabyte first.
| Product | Capacity | Condition | Price | Per TB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fikwot FX660 4TB M.2 SSD | 4TB | New | $436.99 | $109.25 | Buy |
| Crucial P310 2TB SSD | 2TB | Refurb | $224.99 | $112.50 | Buy |
| Corsair MP600 CORE XT 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD | 2TB | Refurb | $239.50 | $119.75 | Buy |
| fanxiang S660 PCIe 4.0 4TB NVMe M.2 SSD for PS5 with Heatsink | 4TB | New | $499.99 | $125.00 | Buy |
| Samsung SSD 990 EVO Plus 4TB | 4TB | Refurb | $499.99 | $125.00 | Buy |
| fanxiang 4TB NVMe SSD PCIe Gen 4 Gaming SSD for PS5 | 4TB | New | $499.99 | $125.00 | Buy |
| Lexar 4TB NM790 NVMe SSD w/Heatsink, 7400/6500 MB/s | 4TB | New | $509.95 | $127.49 | Buy |
| Silicon Power 4TB US75 Nvme PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 SSD R/W Up to 7,000/6,500 MB/s with | 4TB | New | $509.97 | $127.49 | Buy |
Every figure in this section is read from our own catalogue at the moment you loaded the page, and it is a LEVELS observation rather than a rate. The floor is the single cheapest in-stock listing per terabyte; it can move because one cheap listing appeared or vanished, without the market having done anything. That is why percentage changes on this site come from a matched-model index that compares each listing against its own prior price, and never from comparing one day's floor to another's.
As of 2026-08-18, the floor sits at $109.25/TB and the median across 138 in-stock listings at $185.25/TB. The gap between those two is worth as much as either number on its own: a floor far below the median means the cheap end is one or two listings deep, and a floor close to it means the whole catalogue is priced tightly together.
The two condition tracks price separately and we never merge them. New stock starts at $109.25/TB and the refurbished track at $112.50/TB. A refurbished floor well below the new one is the ordinary state of this market rather than a bargain signal, and scoring one against the other would manufacture a discount that does not exist.
The picks table further down carries the same data at row level, in stock only, so a reader who decides to act can do so without leaving the page. It never shows an out-of-stock row, which is why you will not find an empty price cell anywhere in this cluster.
Our snapshots for this category begin on 2026-07-08 and run to 2026-08-18, which is 42 days of daily observations. That window is stated because a trend without its window is not checkable, and because 42 days is a real but modest history - long enough to show a level, short enough that a single unusual month shapes it.
Over the most recent 30 days of that series - 2026-07-19 to 2026-08-18 - the daily floor moved from $106.87/TB to $109.25/TB, a change of +2.2%. Read that as what the cheapest listing did, not as what the market did.
The chart is a levels series by design. A levels chart answers 'what does the cheap end cost' and it answers it honestly; it does not answer 'has the market moved', because a single listing entering or leaving changes it. Both questions are legitimate and they need different instruments, so we do not use one chart to imply the other.
This category is unusual because two separate clocks are running on it at once, and they point the same way. Neither is a prediction; both are already in motion, and a buyer's decision is really a decision about which of them matters more.
The first clock is the NAND market. Console storage is not insulated from the contract prices that set the cost of PC SSDs - it draws on the same wafers. Omdia's analysis of the memory surge estimated the combined memory in a base PS5 at at least 20% of its bill of materials in the second quarter of 2025, and describes the effect propagating across the console market as existing inventory is consumed and new units are built on renegotiated contracts. A drive sold for a console is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive with a specific set of requirements, and it is priced out of the same supply as every other NVMe drive.
The second clock is demand, and it has a date on it. GTA 6 is scheduled for 19 November, and a title of that scale drives console storage purchases in a way ordinary releases do not - not because of any one game's install size, but because a system-seller pushes a large number of people to audit their free space in the same few weeks. We do not publish an install-size figure for it, because none has been confirmed by Rockstar; every number in circulation is an estimate and we label it as one wherever it appears on this site.
Those two clocks compound rather than offset. A supply-side cost increase moving through the channel, meeting a demand spike with a fixed date, is a combination where waiting is unusually likely to cost more than acting - which is the opposite of the normal advice for consumer electronics, where waiting nearly always wins.
Directionally, and stated as of the date above: we see no mechanism currently pointing PS5 SSD prices down before the November date, and two independent mechanisms pointing them up. That is a statement about direction and about the absence of a reversal signal, not a forecast of a price.
We will not print a figure for what a 2TB drive will cost in October, and you should treat anyone who does with suspicion - the honest answer is that the NAND contract cycle and a release date are both known, and their combined effect on a retail price is not.
What the data does support is a statement about ASYMMETRY. If you buy now and prices fall, you have overpaid on a drive you were going to buy anyway. If you wait and the two clocks land as they are currently pointing, you pay more for the same part in a thinner market. Those outcomes are not symmetric, and the buying decision should reflect that rather than a guess about the midpoint.
One of this cluster's own measurements is directly relevant to buying at the moment. A PS5 requires a heatsink on any drive installed in the expansion bay, and the intuition is that a drive with one fitted costs more than the same drive bare plus a heatsink bought separately. Our own catalogue does not consistently support that intuition - at several capacities the cheapest listing WITH a heatsink fitted is at or below the cheapest bare listing per terabyte, and the comparison block on this page recomputes that split on every load rather than quoting a figure we measured once.
The mechanism is not mysterious: the fitted drives are sold as console upgrades and compete on that basis, while bare drives are priced into the general NVMe market where datacentre and desktop demand is setting the level. When the general market is rising faster than the console-accessory niche, the fitted product can end up cheaper. That is a live condition rather than a rule, which is exactly why we recompute it.
The practical consequence is that buying bare to save money is a strategy that needs checking against current listings rather than assuming, and that a buyer who checks may find the safer option is also the cheaper one.
This is the section that makes the rest of the page worth citing. An outlook with no stated falsifiers cannot be wrong, and a claim that cannot be wrong is not information. Here is exactly what we are watching, and what each of these moving would mean:
NAND contract prices turning down in reported industry figures. TrendForce revised its own 1Q26 NAND forecast UPWARD, from 33-38% to 55-60% QoQ, on 2 February 2026 - a downward revision of comparable size would be the clearest single signal that this category's cost floor is easing.
Our own daily floor per terabyte holding lower across weeks rather than for a day. The chart on this page is a levels series precisely so that a real move is distinguishable from one cheap listing appearing.
Our tracked in-stock rate recovering. A category where more of the catalogue is buyable at once has slack in it; we record that count daily and the signals section states the window we actually hold rather than a rounded one.
The November date moving. A delay would decouple the demand clock from the supply clock and remove half the reason this page reads the way it does. That would be reported and we would say so in the next edition.
Console-maker pricing action. Sony absorbing component cost rather than passing it through, or a first-party storage price cut, would indicate the pressure is being managed rather than transmitted to buyers.
We check these monthly and publish the result as a dated check-in whether or not the read changed. An outlook that never revises is not being tested.
If you already know you need the space before November, the case for buying now is stronger here than in any other category we cover, because both clocks point the same way and one of them has a fixed date on it. This is not urgency manufactured for a page - it is what the two mechanisms describe when written down together.
Buy on cost per terabyte rather than sticker price, and check the heatsink comparison above before deciding to buy bare. The 2TB and 4TB tiers carry the best cost per terabyte in our catalogue at most moments, and the 1TB tier is consistently the worst value per terabyte despite the lowest sticker.
If you are not sure you need it, the honest answer is that a console with free space does not benefit from a drive, and no forecast changes that. Storage bought against a hypothetical need is the one purchase this page cannot justify for you.
These are the things that would change the outlook above. They are checked in every monthly edition, and the edition says so whether or not any of them moved.
In-stock rate. Across the 16 days we hold in PS5 SSD stock history (2026-08-03 to 2026-08-18), the share of tracked listings actually buyable moved from 100% to 83.3%. The window is the one we have, not a rounded thirty - this table began recording recently and labelling it otherwise would be the same error as a 30-day chart drawn from 11 points.
Every monthly edition, newest first, archived rather than overwritten. Each one opens by stating what the previous edition said and what our data actually did - an archive that never grades itself is a blog, not a record.
The main forecast page covers the method and the hard drive picture in full · what counts as a good price · the cheapest per terabyte right now · hard drive forecast · SSD forecast · server RAM forecast · external drive forecast · used drive forecast · the storage crisis tracker follows the category-level picture.
If you were going to buy one anyway and you are short on space, yes - and the reasoning is about asymmetry rather than prediction. Two mechanisms currently point the same way: NAND contract prices have been revised upward by the industry's own trackers, and a 19 November release concentrates console storage demand into a narrow window. If you buy now and prices fall, you overpaid slightly on a drive you needed. If you wait and both clocks land as they are pointing, you pay more in a thinner market. Those are not symmetric risks. What we will not do is tell you a price for October, because nobody credibly can.
Rockstar has not published a confirmed install size, so we do not print one. Every figure currently circulating is an estimate, including the widely repeated ones, and we label them as estimates wherever they appear on this site rather than laundering them into facts by repetition. What is safe to say is that a title of this scale on modern consoles occupies a large fraction of the base console's usable space, and that the audit most people will perform in November is what drives the demand spike - not the exact number.
Our own floor per terabyte is on the chart above with its window stated, and it is a levels series - it shows what the cheap end costs rather than asserting a market direction. On the supply side, console storage draws on the same NAND supply as PC SSDs, and Omdia's analysis put combined memory at at least 20% of a base PS5's bill of materials in 2Q25, with cost increases propagating as inventory is consumed. The falsifiers section lists exactly what would change that reading.
Per terabyte rather than per drive, the middle tiers usually win, and the live table on this page shows the current position at every capacity we track. The 1TB tier reliably carries the worst cost per terabyte despite having the lowest sticker price, which is the trap a buyer shopping on price alone walks into. The 8TB tier carries a scarcity premium. Buy the tier whose cost per terabyte is lowest among the capacities that actually fit your need.
Yes - Sony requires a heatsink on drives installed in the expansion bay, and this is not optional. The interesting part is the price: our catalogue frequently shows the cheapest drive with a heatsink already fitted at or below the cheapest bare drive per terabyte, because fitted drives compete in the console-accessory niche while bare drives are priced into the general NVMe market. The comparison recomputes on every page load, so check it rather than assuming bare is cheaper.
We do not know, and neither does anyone quoting you a date. The demand spike is one of the two clocks and it does have an end; the NAND supply clock does not, and it is the one the industry's own trackers have been revising upward rather than down. A demand spike passing does not by itself reverse a cost increase that has propagated into contract prices. Watch the falsifiers above rather than the calendar.