SanDisk just priced an 8TB PS5 drive at more than 3 times the PS5 Pro, and gamers are not taking it well

SanDisk has launched a new lineup of PlayStation 5 storage drives, and the pricing has left gamers stunned. The company’s Optimus GX Pro 850P NVMe SSD tops out with an 8TB model listed at 2,960 dollars, a figure that is actually a discount from the regular price of 3,700 dollars. For context, that single storage drive costs more than three times as much as an entire PS5 Pro console, which already ships with a 2TB SSD included.

The new drives mark a rebrand away from SanDisk’s previous WD_Black naming, with the Optimus GX Pro line now available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB capacities. As detailed by Engadget, even the smaller options carry steep price tags, as the 2TB model costs 760 dollars after being marked down from 950 dollars, making it more expensive than a standard PS5 console with a disc drive. The drive is a PCIe 4.0 model with read and write speeds of 7,300 and 6,300 megabytes per second, specs that closely match the WD_Black SN850X SSD it appears to be replacing.

That resemblance has raised questions among tech enthusiasts, since the 8TB version of the predecessor drive was selling for under 600 dollars as recently as last year. Even an 84 percent discount on the new 3,700 dollar SSD would only bring the price back down to that previous range, illustrating how steep the increase actually is.

The shortage driving up storage costs is also reshaping prices across the rest of the gaming industry

The new pricing arrives amid what industry watchers have started calling a RAMpocalypse, with memory and storage component costs hitting record highs due to surging AI-driven demand. Sony has already raised prices on the PS5, PS5 Pro, and PlayStation Portal, and some analysts now expect the next PlayStation generation to push console pricing toward the four figure mark.

Microsoft has increased Xbox console prices twice since 2025, and even Nintendo, which had largely avoided previous hikes, raised the price of the Switch 2 by 50 dollars in the United States ahead of changes taking effect in September. Valve’s Steam Deck lineup has felt the same pressure, with prices on the 1TB OLED model climbing by as much as 300 dollars in May after the company discontinued its most affordable model late last year.

SanDisk is positioning the Optimus GX Pro 850P as an officially licensed option for the PS5 and PS5 Pro, featuring an exclusive heatsink design with the PlayStation logo and support for the M.2 slot used in those consoles. The drive carries a five year limited warranty and can store up to 200 games at the 8TB capacity.

It supports random read and write speeds of 1.2 million IOPS and is rated to operate in temperatures between 0 and 85 degrees Celsius, and SanDisk says the drive has been tested to run games directly from storage without needing to shuffle files between internal and external drives.