Memory manufacturers including Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have signed long-term agreements that divert capacity to data centers, causing consumer RAM and SSD prices to surge dramatically over the past year—DDR5 kits up 363%, SSDs up to 254%—pricing out PC enthusiasts and pushing consumers toward cloud services.
Memory manufacturers have engineered sustained price increases in RAM and SSDs by consolidating long-term contracts with major cloud providers, causing widespread consumer price hikes across PCs, gaming consoles, and consumer electronics. SSD and RAM prices have surged 137–483% since September 2025, pushing consumers toward cloud services while Chinese competitors YMTC and CXMT expand globally.
Amazon S3 has become the foundation of modern cloud data architecture due to its capacity, durability, and low cost, but its design reflects decades-old disk hardware limitations that impose architectural constraints on all systems built atop it. SSD costs have dropped and datacenter networks have improved dramatically, making SSD-based disaggregated storage technically feasible as a superior alternative, yet cloud providers lack incentive to replace their lucrative S3 infrastructure.