Hello fellow perfectionists.

Is it worthwhile to disconnect the 4molex from your optical drive once you have installed windows and the few programs that still get distributed through a physical media? I haven't used my dvd drive in months.

Not sure how much they use at idle. I've stopped adding DVD drives and use thumb drives. They can hold more data than even a Blu-Ray, and are faster.

Some of my systems still have DVD drives for ripping.

I remember a few years ago I measured the power consumption of a PC with and without optical drive, and the difference was about 2W (I think... it was quite a while ago). I don't know if that is a typical value, because I only tested one.

I removed the optical drive from my old rig, and the kill-a-watt could not tell the difference at the socket. I don't know the margin for it, but my guess is in the 1-2 W territory mentioned in the previous post.