How much power does an idling optical drive use?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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MassMan
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How much power does an idling optical drive use?

Post by MassMan » Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:29 am

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.

MattHelm
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Re: How much power does an idling optical drive use?

Post by MattHelm » Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:04 pm

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.

Mr Evil
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Re: How much power does an idling optical drive use?

Post by Mr Evil » Thu Dec 20, 2012 11:54 am

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.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: How much power does an idling optical drive use?

Post by Das_Saunamies » Sat Dec 22, 2012 6:32 am

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.

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