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The price of computer tech continues to skyrocket, with some components reaching astronomical levels as demand for them is driven by the growing AI boom. And if you’ve ever heard the phrase “worth its weight in gold,” you’ll know it’s usually meant to showcase just how useful or valuable someone or something is. As an idiom, though, it’s never been a literal statement. However, that might no longer be the case, at least with certain SSDs, according to reports from Tom’s Hardware.
The conclusion appears to have originated in a thread that first appeared this month on the subreddit r/pcmasterrace. Based on the post, an 8TB WD_Black SSD — considered one of the fastest NVME SSDs you can buy, according to some user comments — was listed for over $2,000. The price has remained mostly the same, and even some other WD_Black SSDs, like the SN850X, are listed for upwards of $1,100 for an 8TB variant, which also happens to be one of the biggest SSDs you can buy.
Of course, not all SSDs are created equal, so not all are going to be worth their weight in gold. For example, the 4TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD is available for under $600 on Amazon right now, while a similarly sized WD_Black is running for almost $900. So, naturally, the SSD brand and type you have will determine whether it’s worth its weight in gold. To figure out if it is, we’ll need to do a little math.
Weighing the price of gold against the SSDs
First, we have to look at the current price of gold. This number fluctuates, but at the time of writing this article, the price of gold is roughly $155.42 per gram. Now, if we look at the weight of these SSDs, the 8TB variant of the WD_Black SN850X weighs 8.8 grams, according to the item’s listing on Amazon.
Taking that weight and multiplying it by the current price of gold, we can figure out that 8.8 grams of gold are equal to $1,367.70. Now, that means that this particular SSD — even at 8TB — is worth slightly less than its weight in gold. However, when you start looking at some of the other options, like the item the Reddit post pointed out, you’ll see a different picture.
Looking at the Amazon listing for the 8TB WD_Black SN8100, we can determine that the SSD weighs 7.5 grams. Then, if we take the per-gram price of gold and multiply it by this weight, we’ll find that 7.5 grams of gold would cost roughly $1,165.65. That means that at the currently listed price of $2,300.49, the 8TB WD_Black SN8100 is worth around 65% more than its current weight in gold.
Along with the ongoing RAM price hikes — which could change laptops for the worse in 2026 — buying a new, high-end SSD is probably a PC upgrade that isn’t worth your money, at least for now.
Why are SSD prices so high
Ultimately, the main reason for the ongoing price rises in SSDs and other PC tech is the AI boom we’re seeing right now. Many companies are pushing their dwindling supplies toward AI, as the data centers that provide users with access to those models also require many components to keep them running. These data centers are so massive that companies like Microsoft have restarted the site of the worst nuclear disaster in US history to help power their AI.
And because AI chips are taking so many of these components, the overall supply for these isn’t meeting up with the demand — which means we’ll see the costs increase across the board for computer-related tech, televisions, and even smartphones. In fact, we’ve already seen reports from Nothing, a popular cheap smartphone brand, that smartphone prices will go up, even for those more budget-friendly devices.
This is because these components are becoming harder to source, as demand is much higher than the current supply. This is similar to a situation we saw in 2020 and 2021 with graphics cards and other chipsets, when COVID-19 led to a massive chip shortage worldwide.
