Ps5 Pro: SanDisk’s premium new drives come with built-in thermal protection and official Sony licensing.. Source: Sandisk
If you’ve been looking to upgrade your PlayStation 5 storage lately, you know it’s always a bit of an investment. But SanDisk’s newly revealed lineup of officially licensed SSDs takes things to an entirely different level.
The storage manufacturer has officially listed its new Optimus GX PRO 850P PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD series. While these drives promise top-tier performance tailored specifically for the PS5 and PS5 Pro, it’s the eye-watering price tags that are turning heads. The high-capacity versions of these drives will actually cost you significantly more than buying a brand-new console.
The Staggering Breakdown of Prices
The new Optimus GX PRO line comes in four storage capacities, each equipped with a custom, PlayStation-branded integrated heatsink to keep things running cool during long gaming sessions. Here is exactly what they cost right now based on SanDisk‘s initial site listings:
- 1TB: $380 / £339
- 2TB: $760 / £678 (More than a standard PS5)
- 4TB: $1,500 / £1,337 (Twice the price of a PS5 Pro)
- 8TB: $2,960 / £2,639 (Nearly four times the price of a PS5 Pro)
To put that into perspective, spending nearly $3,000 on an 8TB drive means you are paying enough to buy a fleet of PlayStation consoles just to hold more digital games. While SanDisk has listed these with “discounted” tags on their site, the buy buttons are currently inactive, suggesting an official retail rollout is still pending.
Why Is Storage Suddenly This Expensive?
To understand why a tiny piece of hardware costs as much as a used car, you have to look at the broader tech economy. We are currently living through a major global storage and memory crisis.
Over the last year, the massive, unprecedented boom in AI data centers has swallowed up the global supply of flash memory chips. Silicon manufacturers are shifting their priorities to supply corporate tech giants building AI infrastructure, leaving standard consumer hardware out in the cold.
The Ripple Effect: This isn’t just affecting high-end gaming gear. The scarcity of components has driven up the prices of entry-level tech like the Raspberry Pi, and it’s the primary reason Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all raised their hardware prices globally over the past 12 months.
Installing an SSD gives you more room for modern, massive game files—if you can afford the entry price.. Source: Kingston Technology
On paper, the specs of the Optimus GX PRO 850P are undeniably impressive. It delivers blazing-fast sequential read speeds of up to 7,300 MB/s and write speeds hitting 6,600 MB/s. That easily clears Sony’s internal requirements for seamless game loading.
But with memory shortages expected to last for at least another year or two, luxury components like these are going to remain out of reach for the average gamer. If you need extra space today, hunting for older stock or third-party drives without the official “PlayStation” branding tax might be your best bet to save your wallet.