Flash supplies are tight, and prices for DRAM, SSDs, and memory cards have jumped, with plenty of gamers either delaying upgrades or settling for lower-spec builds.
Lexar Europe general manager Grace Su told Digital Foundry that Lexar locked in lower-density flash once it was clear the shortage was not easing.
Su said customers and distributors were kicking off because pricing was becoming unmanageable, so Lexar pushed smaller-capacity Micro SD cards, RAM kits, and SSDs.
Those smaller RAM kits and memory cards sold roughly as expected, but demand for 256GB and 512GB SSDs landed at a fraction of the forecast.
When it comes to sub-terabyte SSDs, “the end user just doesn’t buy.”
Su said many users and retailers would rather wait and limp along than pay a premium for a 512GB SSD in 2026, with some even threatening to crawl back to hard drives.
The psychology is simple enough, because 1TB feels like a different class of storage, and a 512GB drive can vanish into one “forever game” like Call of Duty: Warzone.
Memory cards have flipped the other way, with users asking Lexar for 32GB and 64GB cards again instead of the 128GB and 256GB sizes that topped charts in early 2025.
System integrators and B2B buyers have been more flexible because they are trying to land a complete laptop or desktop at a fixed price point, such as $1000.
Shipping a box with a 512GB SSD to hit the sticker price is fine when upgrades are easier than swapping most other components, even for beginners.
Lexar staff said PCIe 5.0 SSDs are being treated as too pricey, with take-up less than 10 per cent, while PCIe 4.0 is the default choice and older NVMe barely gets a look.
That is awkward, because PCIe 3.0 NVMe is still the value option for most use cases, and game load times do not fall off a cliff between NVMe and SATA SSDs.
Lexar seems to have been caught out by how fiercely people defend the 1TB floor, even while they cut corners on RAM.
Modern games can be RAM-hungry, Windows 11 is not shy about grabbing memory, and a dual-channel 16GB setup is the bare minimum, with 32GB the sensible target.
That has not stopped V-Colour from selling “1+1” kits that bundle one real stick and one light-up dummy, so your empty RAM slot does not look sad.
Su said Lexar expects these market conditions to persist over the long term and that the storage industry has entered a “new era”.
