SSDs Are Stupid Cheap Right Now -- and They’ll Be Even Cheaper on Prime Day

Hi, my name is Matt, and I have a storage problem.

Solid-state drives are so cheap right now that I can’t stop myself from buying them, and there will almost certainly be even better SSD deals around Amazon Prime Day. Someone hold my credit card.

I bought a 2TB Intel 660p from Newegg last year around Black Friday for $249 (along with a 2TB Crucial MX500 for $208). And when Amazon briefly had the 2TB 660p for sale from a third-party seller a couple weeks ago for a too-good-to-be-true $103, I couldn’t stop myself from clicking the buy button once again.

After receiving that drive yesterday, I’m relieved to confirm I wasn’t scammed. The Amazon stork dropped off my second 2TB QLC baby factory sealed and secured in the box. And after I busted it open, it benched with the same performance as my first bouncing 2TB NVMe baby. Now my first-born 512GB Samsung 960 Pro boot drive is a little jealous of the new twins.

As I wrote last year, hard drives are dead to me, and I’m never looking back. My home desktop currently has 3.5TB of solid-state storage, and I now have 4TB more that I could install, if I had spare M.2 slots or room to wedge a PCIe M.2 card in my Micro-ATX motherboard between my bulky 2.5-slot Aorus 1080 Ti graphics card.

Right now, one of those 2TB drives is housed in a MyDigitalSSD external enclosure, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the new one. Start building a new AMD Ryzen 3000 PC? Buy a new laptop that supports NVMe drives and swap out the skimpy pre-installed boot drive? I’m sure I’ll think of something, and I’m sure it won’t be friendly to my credit card.

Clearly, I have my storage needs covered--and then some. But if you’re after a new SSD (or three), there’s never been a better time to buy. And with aging flagship drives cluttering up shelves and prices continuing to slip (not to mention PCIe 4.0 drives arriving soon), sites like Amazon and Newegg seem desperate to move their stock.

So expect to see some great deals around Prime Day (plus a few days before and after) on solid-state drives from the likes of Adata, intel, Crucial, Samsung and others. I don’t know if we’ll see the kind of crazy deal I got on the 660p from the third-party seller (just over 5 cents a gig!), but it’s certainly possible. I’ve already noticed some SATA drives from the likes of Team Group and other, lesser-known SSD makers slipping below 8 cents a gig.

We’ll be tracking the hottest SSD deals for you on our Best Deals on SSD and Storage page. To make you’re actually getting a good deal, you can check out my How to Tell an SSD Prime Day Deal From a Solid-State Dud article and general shopping tips from our SSD Buying Guide.

So pay attention in the coming days if you’re after a sweet deal on speedy solid-state storage. There will probably be more than a few sales worth snatching up. Just don’t tell me about it. I’m off the hard stuff for good--or at least until I find a deal on a new PCIe 4.0 drive. Do you still have my credit card?

Note: As with all of our op-eds, the opinions expressed here belong to the writer alone and not Tom's Hardware as a team.

Matt Safford

After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.

  • BlueCat57
    I couldn't wait. I bought a MX500 1tb for $100.

    Maybe Windows 10 will be on sale. I need a license.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    I bought a 1TB Samsung 860 Evo for $116 and I think I might pick up an Intel 660P or two on Prime Day depending on how much they are.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    BlueCat57 said:
    I couldn't wait. I bought a MX500 1tb for $100.

    Maybe Windows 10 will be on sale. I need a license.

    I wouldn't hold your breath on that one, I bought a 10 Pro license back in March and it was $140 then, and it's still going for $140. Software (especially operating systems) is usually something that doesn't get heavily discounted during Prime Day / Black Friday / etc.
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    g-unit1111 said:
    I bought a 1TB Samsung 860 Evo for $116 and I think I might pick up an Intel 660P or two on Prime Day depending on how much they are.


    That's going to be a seriously long wait.
    Reply
  • King_V
    Almost 2 months ago, I got a SATA 2.5" Crucial MX500 SSD for my dad's computer for under $100. His system doesn't have an M.2 slot.

    He had a 1TB hard drive, but Windows seemed to thrash it a lot. It's a Haswell i3 with 4GB of RAM, and while I was concerned with the RAM, his typical usage didn't even hit 3GB.

    He never complained about the system, saying it was just fine. Still, I noticed, delays when logging in, the system being sluggish until Windows and whatever else did whatever they deemed was so important, and then it would, in fact, be fine.

    I would've bought a smaller one. His 1TB hard drive had under 50GB of data being used. But at around $90 for the 1TB, spending around $65 for the 500GB or $45 for the 250GB just seemed foolish.

    Backed up some data, swapped the drive (and given the tight confines of the case, velcroing it to the inside wall of the case makes for much easier access, should the need arise, than removing panels, and the front cage that holds the old HDD and the optical drive).

    He'd said it was fine before. Now, however, he's pretty astonished. Boot up is so much faster, the thing is ready to go the instant he logs in, and shutdown is near instant, whereas before he said shutdown was 30 to 50 seconds.

    Night and day doesn't begin to describe it.


    But - while I'd be hesitant about 3rd party sellers, damn, I wish I'd seen that Amazon deal for the 2TB 660p for $103!! Would've been perfect for my son's PC.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    logainofhades said:
    That's going to be a seriously long wait.

    Oh yeah didn't Prime Day already pass?
    Reply