KIOXIA fires back at rising SSD costs with new EG7 Series for PC OEMs

The current DRAM and flash memory crisis has seen the cost of everyday PC hardware steadily rise in recent months, with the biggest pain points in memory and storage. If you've been tracking the prices of high-capacity DDR5 memory modules and SSDs, you're probably aware that building a new PC or upgrading an existing rig is slowly becoming prohibitively expensive.

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And although it feels like regular consumers are being left behind in favor of AI infrastructure and the data center market, there is some good news. Specifically, KIOXIA's new "value-oriented" EG7 Series SSDs, which the company says it created to deliver an affordable solution for PC OEMs and PC makers.

These DRAM-less QLC-based SSDs adopt KIOXIA's impressive 8th-generation BiCS FLASH technology to deliver performance on par with more expensive storage options while improving power efficiency. These new SSDs are set to be offered in the M.2 2230, 2242, and 2280 form factors, with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB variants. Performance-wise, you're looking at PCIe Gen4 levels, with sequential read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 6,200 MB/s.

"QLC technology continues to expand what's possible in client storage by delivering compelling value without compromising user experience," said Neville Ichhaporia, senior vice president and general manager of the SSD business unit, KIOXIA America, Inc. "With the EG7 Series, we're enabling PC OEMs to bring high-performance, power-efficient storage to a broader range of systems at a more accessible price point."

With Micron's consumer-facing Crucial brand no longer a thing, it's great to see a company like KIOXIA step in like this to fill that void, as its new EG7 Series of SSDs will no doubt make their way into many consumer and commercial laptops, notebooks, and desktops once they begin shipping in the second quarter of 2026.