SPCR

Just came across this from a couple years ago: http://www.buildsilentpc.com/silent-dvdrom-drives/

Anyone heard of or tried this I/O Magic Internal Optical Drive. http://iomagic.com/internal-desktop-optical-storage/

SPCR staff have not heard of this product before, but the concept is hardly new. It's been used in the past, tho I can't recall right now which brands. Certainly Asus & Samsung & LG have created some quieter optical drives in the past.

The blurb at buildsilentpc.com barely qualifies as a news piece, no assessment of any kind. Looks like they read the PR blurb and regurgitated it... and of course, iomagic has even less to say.

Why don't you try one and report back? If it isn't all that it's supposed to be, you can just run it at reduced speed like we've been doing for years & it'll be quiet enough for the time you need to use it... till you rip the disc to ISO and run it off your HDD or SSD.

Thanks Mike. I will try and pick up both an I/O Magic and an Asus to compare.

You're right, Asus has similar sounding marketing around their optical drives (e.g. E-Media http://www.asus.com/Optical_Drives/DRW24D1ST/). I hadn't noticed that before, as I haven't bought an optical drive in about 6 years.

Optical drives are a very generic product nowadays. There's very little innovation any more so it seems unusual at this point in time that someone has invested in such a design shift. Plus nowadays optical drives are becoming increasingly marginalised as the need for them decreases. Many systems no longer have them and slimline drives are becoming more common place instead of the half height size.

For niche use cases this might be perfect however.