Author: Danielle

Top-end SSDs have gotten so pricey they’re worth more than their weight in gold

  • SSDs have shot up in price over the past month and a half
  • Tom’s Hardware compared the cost of some top-end SSDs against gold in terms of their relative weight
  • It turns out that high-end 8TB SSDs are, on average, worth more than gold now by weight – and a few 4TB models are, too

If you’ve ever wondered whether SSDs are more valuable than gold, gram-for-gram, in weight terms – and some folks have, following price inflation driven by the memory crisis – the answer is, rather incredibly, yes, for capacious high-end drives, anyway.

Tom’s Hardware reports that a Reddit discussion sprang up around this topic, and our sister site ran some comparisons of the relative cost-to-weight ratios of 24k gold versus certain NVMe SSD models.

Those are the compact stick-style SSDs, of course, that plug into your motherboard via an M.2 slot. (It’s worth noting that SATA SSDs, which are much slower than NVMe drives, are in danger of having the plug pulled by a major manufacturer, Samsung, as you may have seen recently.)

To work this out, Tom’s collated a list of SSDs (over 100) from major US retailers (Newegg, Microcenter, Best Buy, and Walmart), which were all PCIe 4 or 5 models with at least 4TB capacity (and currently in stock). These were all consumer models, with pricey enterprise drives (laden with a bunch of extra bells and whistles), not considered as they’d throw out the overall value equation.

And obviously, no SSD with a heatsink was included as that ramps up the weight a lot (which averaged around 8 grams for 4TB models, and only slightly more at 8.2 grams for 8TB drives).

With the 8TB models, Tom’s worked out that the average price is now $1,476 with their sample. And the price of 8.2 grams of gold? That’s about $1,200, based on a price of $148 per gram at the time of compiling the comparison.

So, these top-end SSDs are more than worth their weight in gold, quite literally.

As for the 4TB SSDs, they aren’t there yet with their average price, but a few of the very top models edge past the price of the equivalent weight in gold.

PC gamer looking at PC in anger and disbelief

(Image credit: Shutterstock / aslysun)

Analysis: storage pain

Storage is unfortunately following in the footsteps of RAM. While the price of SSDs hasn’t shot up as much as system memory has, matters have already gotten pretty bad.

Tom’s shows us a graph of 4TB NVMe drive pricing from PC PartPicker, and you can clearly see that prices rose considerably in December, and there’s been an even sharper uptick in the first half of January. Hence, this eyebrow-raising comparison to the price of gold, and it’s even worse with faster 8TB models.

Where are we headed from here? I don’t think it’s too controversial a suggestion that the only way is up. It’s just a question of what the flight path might be from here and how steep a climb.

So, if you’re needing an SSD for an upgrade or a new PC build, you may want to pull the trigger on a purchase sooner rather than later (no matter what the size, but certainly with top-end models). For example, you can still get a Samsung 9100 Pro for $600 at Newegg in the US, and while the same drive was $400 on sale for Black Friday just a couple of months ago, odds are it could increase in price at a rate of knots from here on out.

Looking at our favorite SSD, the WD Black SN8100, the 2TB model was $220 during Black Friday, but is now – wait for it – $499 on Newegg. Ouch. Western Digital models seem to be riding the crest of the price hikes, Tom’s observes, though that could partly relate to the popularity of the drives and how fast stock is selling through as a result.

It’s nasty out there in storage land right now, but it could well get worse – and it very probably will. Meanwhile, we might see some creative solutions floating around, and as we made clear earlier this week, those who are on the hunt for an SSD for their PS5 could look at an alternative way to fix their storage predicament.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

Go to Source

Taiwan tariffs fall after trade deal, hopefully easing tech prices

Summary created by Smart Answers AI

In summary:

  • PCWorld reports a U.S.-Taiwan trade deal cuts tariffs on Taiwanese imports from 20 percent to 15 percent, potentially lowering tech prices.
  • The agreement includes Taiwan’s $250 billion investment in U.S. semiconductor, AI, and energy facilities, with TSMC contributing $100 billion for Arizona fabs.
  • This deal aims to relocate 40 percent of Taiwan’s supply chain domestically while mitigating recent U.S. tariffs on advanced computing chips.

The U.S. and Taiwan struck a trade deal on Thursday night, cutting prices of goods imported from the tech-centric region in exchange for investment inside the U.S.

The deal means that tariffs on imported goods from Taiwan will fall from 20 percent to 15 percent, Reuters reported. The move comes just days after the Trump administration placed additional tariffs on the sale of “advanced computing chips” like the Nvidia H200, used in data centers.

In return, Taiwan companies will invest $250 billion in U.S. facilities to increase domestic production of semiconductors, AI, and energy, including $100 billion already committed by TSMC into its own fabs, in Arizona and elsewhere. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC that the goal was to bring 40 percent of Taiwan’s supply chain to the United States.

China regards Taiwan as its own territory, while Taiwan disputes that position. The difference has prompted Chian to hold military exercises near the island, whose military forces are far smaller than its larger neighbor.

“Look, they need to keep our president happy, right,” Lutnick told CNBC, referring to Taiwan, as reported by Reuters. “Because our president is the key to protecting their country.”

Tariffs have become a maze for U.S. companies to navigate; some companies have even moved their manufacturing operations out of China into Southeast Asia to avoid earlier tariffs. Executives of those companies have told PCWorld that tariff enforcement can be complicated due to intermittent enforcement and the willingness of foreign governments, especially China, to subsidize manufacturing costs, giving them an advantage.

Meanwhile, persistent shortages in flash memory and DRAM have created their own unofficial tariffs of sorts, raising prices for many PCs and laptops. That could last years, vendors say.

Go to Source

Spotify’s hidden Basic tier can save you cash, if you can find it

Summary created by Smart Answers AI

In summary:

  • PCWorld reports that Spotify offers a hidden “Basic” tier launched in mid-2024 for $10.99/month, providing music-only streaming without audiobooks or lossless audio.
  • This plan requires existing Premium subscribers to downgrade and isn’t available to all users, making it difficult to access.
  • The Basic tier includes ad-free music, offline listening, and flexible playback, but once canceled, users cannot re-subscribe to this potentially phased-out option.

Annoyed by Spotify’s latest price hike? You can always dodge the increase by switching to a competing streamer, but if you’d rather stick to Spotify, there’s another option: a cheaper but well-hidden music-only tier. 

Spotify’s Basic plans aren’t new—they were first announced in mid 2024—but they’re easy to forget and even harder to spot, given that they’re buried at the bottom of Spotify’s Premium plan listings. And you can’t sign up for this service tier as a new user.

For a small monthly savings versus Spotify’s Premium plans, the Basic tier gives you almost all of the same features, including ad-free access to Spotify’s massive catalog of tunes, offline listening, and the ability to play tracks in any order you wish. 

The biggest difference between Spotify’s Premium and Basic plans comes down to audiobooks. While Spotify Premium tiers include 15 hours of audiobook listening (either for individual subscribers or for the “manager” of a Family or Duo plan), the Basic plan is just for music.  

Another difference between the Basic and Premium plans is that only the latter offers lossless music streaming, while Basic members must make do with lossy “high-quality” streaming. 

We’ve established that Spotify Basic is cheaper than Spotify Premium, but how much cheaper?

At its launch in June 2024, an individual Basic plan cost $10.99 a month, which was a buck cheaper than the $11.99 monthly charge for Premium Individual at the time. (Earlier this week, Spotify announced across-the-board price hikes for its Premium plans, with the individual tier going up to $12.99 a month.) 

OK, so is the Basic Individual plan still $10.99 a month? We’re checking on that (Spotify doesn’t reveal Basic tier pricing on its website), and we’ll update this story once we get the official details.

Spotify also lists Basic Duo and Basic Family plans on its support site, but again, no prices are listed. We’ve reached out for those details as well. 

Then there’s the process of signing up for a Basic plan. You can’t just go to Spotify.com and sign up for Basic as a new user; instead, you must be a Spotify Premium subscriber first, and then you’ll only find the Basic option by downgrading your existing plan—maybe. 

According to Spotify’s support page, only “eligible” Spotify subscribers will see the Basic tier as an option when attempting to switch plans, meaning some Premium members may not see the Basic plan at all. What makes you eligible for Basic? We’re checking that.

Finally, Spotify notes that if you do manage to sign up for a Basic plan but subsequently cancel, you can never go back. 

That’s the type of condition typically attached to a grandfathered plan that’s being phased out, although a peek at the Wayback Machine reveals the proviso has been there since at least early 2025. (Again, we’ve asked Spotify about it.) 

Go to Source