December 15, 2025
Bye-bye SATA, hello spicy comments
Samsung may end SATA SSD production soon
Samsung bails on budget SSDs; home NAS builders rage, price panic kicks in
TLDR: Samsung may stop making cheap SATA SSDs, which could shrink budget options and push prices up. Comments split between speed fans saying it’s logical, home NAS builders warning they still need SATA, and angry calls of “cartel” behavior as RAM supply woes add fuel to the fire.
Samsung is rumored to ditch its older, cheaper SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) in January 2026, and the internet instantly turned into a hardware soap opera. The “speed or bust” crew cheered NVMe (the newer, faster card-style drives), while the budget-and-NAS brigade clutched their home servers. One practical voice noted there aren’t many affordable multi-drive NVMe options, so home storage boxes still lean on SATA bays—and even dropped an earlier HN thread for receipts. Others mourned: with Crucial’s MX500 gone, Samsung’s 870 series felt like the last dependable pick—“end of an era” vibes everywhere.
Then the price panic hit. With [MLID] floating the rumor and [VideoCardz] citing SK Hynix expecting tight consumer RAM supply through 2028, commenters predicted wallet pain if the cheapest SSDs dry up. The spiciest take? Accusations of a “cartel” vibe and calls for China to swoop in and flood the market. The counter-take: even cheap drives already max out SATA speeds, so Samsung is just going where the profits are—AI-era memory like HBM and GDDR, and faster NVMe.
Humor flew: “SATA retirement party” memes, funeral cakes for budget builds, and “pour one out for NAS dads.” Under the jokes lurked a real fear: entry-level PCs and laptops get pricier. Consensus drama: buy now—by mid‑2026, those bargain drives could be history.
Key Points
- •Samsung is rumored to end SATA SSD production, with an announcement expected in January 2026.
- •SATA SSD availability could decline by mid-2026, reducing budget storage options and potentially raising prices.
- •Samsung is reportedly shifting focus to more profitable products: NVMe SSDs, HBM4 memory, and GDDR7 video RAM.
- •NVMe SSDs are faster and easier to manufacture than SATA drives, supporting the strategic shift.
- •A leaked SK Hynix slide suggests consumer RAM supply may remain tight through 2028, adding pricing pressure across PCs and laptops.