SanDisk 8TB PS5 SSD revealed – but its price is three times the PS5 Pro
We're not sure who's buying this
😮 SanDisk has released some new PS5 SSDs, with a monstrous price tag attached to them
💰 The new 8TB Optimus GX Pro 850P costs $3,700 retail, making it more than three times as expensive as a PS5 Pro
🤷♂️ Its release is part of a rebranded range of drives after WD’s SSD division spun off last year
😬 For reference, the old WD SN850X with remarkably similar specs was $600 on sale in 8TB form before the memory crisis
SanDisk has announced its latest PS5 SSDs, and prices aren’t looking good, especially if you want or need a lot of storage.
The new Optimus GX Pro 850P is among a range of drives that have been rebranded from the old WD_Black naming convention after the SSD division was spun off from Western Digital to SanDisk last year.
The drive is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB variants, with the top-end choice costing $2,960. SanDisk also says that the price is technically reduced from $3,700.
For reference, the SSD alone is more than three times the cost of a PS5 Pro, which already comes with a 2TB SSD inside and costs $900 after Sony’s hefty PS5 price rise back in April.
The Optimus GX Pro 850P is a PCIe 4.0 SSD that ticks all of Sony’s stringent requirements for a PS5 drive, coming with its own heatsink and fast speeds of up to 7,300MB/s reads and 6,300 MB/s writes.
Those speeds are virtually identical to the old WD SN850X people have coveted for so long, and before the memory crisis, that was available for under $600 when on sale for its 8TB variant.
If SanDisk were to discount the Optimus GX Pro 850P from its $3,700 MSRP down to $600, that’d work out to a ridiculous 84% discount, as Digital Foundry notes.
This is perhaps one of the worst times we’ve seen for gamers for price hikes because it’s extended to virtually everyone. Nintendo announced a $50 price rise for the Switch 2 that takes effect in September, while it’s also rumored Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X25 Limited Edition could see a higher price tag than expected owing to memory pricing issues.
For reference, there has also been a steep Steam Deck price rise from Valve and Lenovo’s monstrous Legion Go 2 price hike, so it seems no one is safe from the memory crisis, whether you’re on PC or console.
Up next: GTA 6 pre-order date revealed, along with the game’s official cover art
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.