Recommended SSD in the time of crazy prices (1TB stick for AMD 7640)

Framework Laptop 13
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Hey there, lovely people.

TL;DR: I ordered an SSD, it got lost, prices have exploded (again). Would love some recommendations for cheaper options than WD but which will do a decent job.

My Framework 13 arrived recently :partying_face:

Unfortunately I can’t dive in yet. I stumbled on a relatively good price for a WD SN850X at the start of this month and snapped it up… only for the package to get lost in transit. The retailer doesn’t have SN850Xs anymore, and while I’m trying to get them to send me an SN7100 instead they might not bite. A 1TB stick of SN850X now costs €160 elsewhere and I just can’t afford that.

My question: are there other brands / models which will do a decent job on the 7640? WD would have been ideal but at this point I’m looking at alternatives as prices won’t get cheaper any time soon.

More background:

  • ideal budget: somewhere around €100 ($120) would be nice, willing to go up to €130 ($150) if I really have to
  • will be running Fedora with 16GB ADATA memory
  • need 1TB NVMe storage
  • use case:
    • normal work stuff - meetings, LibreOffice, annotating multiple PDFs at once
    • normal other stuff - streaming etc.
    • some (lightish) gaming, but this is primarily a work machine.

Thanks so much for any tips :raising_hands:

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Not sure what your exact budget is, but I found a Crucial P310 1TB for $106 on Amazon!

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Oh, good point - have updated the original post.

Thanks for the recommendation! But cheapest option of that model I can find in EU is $160 :confused:

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You will have to go second hand, or settle for a smaller drive to fit within your price range……. Or just wait it out for the ai bubble to pop.

There is no secret place to buy cheap memory right now. I wish there was.

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Check out the Samsung SSDs. They’ve undergone some renaming/rebranding that makes some pretty recent models look “old” and undesirable, even though the specs are quite good.

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Thanks for the recommendation! Are you referring e.g. to the 980 EVO or 980 Pro?

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Yes, the 980 Pro is an excellent drive. I personally bought the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB on sale in mid 2025 for my Framework 13, and that is also awesome.

Now, the 990 Pro 1TB is overpriced, but the 980 Pro 1TB should still be affordable since the newest model everyone wants is the Samsung 9100 Pro. (They changed the middle 9 in 990 to a 10 = 9 10 0 = 9100.)

The key challenge will be finding new 980 Pro units in stock…

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Great, thanks for the info - appreciate it.

Indeed it seems 980 Pro units are quite thin on the ground, but I’ve added it to my watchlist to see what might be unearthed.

@jared_kidd might be right in the end that there just isn’t a cheap(er) option right now for this capacity. But if I find something will drop it here in the forum.

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You could try temporarily buying a smaller drive and waiting for prices to come back down again after the AI datacenters are largely built out and trying to recoup their investment before buying the next round of components.

Alternately, there are these options:

  1. Buy new system pulls for OEM models. Often, when an end user buys a laptop or desktop, they strip out the existing SSD and replace it with a better one and put the OEM one on ebay for cheaper than the equivalent retail-boxed version.

  2. You can sometimes buy USB SSD drives like the SK hynix T31 Tube and “shuck it” to get the SSD inside it (a 2242 P31 equivalent). I used this trick to get a PCI-e Gen 3 1TB SSD for around $35 when Gen 3 or 4 1TB SSDs were going for $70 and up. 2242 is a bit short but you can simply tape it down using kaptan tape or electrical tape if you have a 2280 slot that doesn’t have a mounting post at the 2242 position.