What's the best optical drive to get?

[p3508]

Always bought Pioneer never had a problem with them and just got myself a sata one

[sjbuck]

Samsung or pioneer, not much to choose between therm, but have also had no complaints from the dirt cheap models, all usually come from the same family.

[Powderhound]

I got an Optiarc, and am beginning to regret it as it sounds like a helicopter taking off in my otherwise silent PC.

[Zhaoman]

My LiteOn is hideously loud. Loud as in Xbox360 loud. I'm going to get a Samsung next I reckon.

[Maccer101]

Samsung 22x, quiet & nice and short so not a fiddle to cable up

[Behemoth]

Always have Pioneer this end, I've still got my DVD117 (The nulti region one) tucked away, reminds me I need to get it spreayed black to put in my PC.

[shrek101]

I tend to go for Pioneer now since they went Sata. I did go for two Samsungs over the last 2 years my first Samsung was horrid, got it from Tekheads had nowt but trouble with dual layer discs but the last one was fine

[NightshadowUK]

silly OEM thing for £12 seems to be sloooooooow as toast. It's taken about 3 hours to install COD4 last night from the DVD, so I need a new one.

Just a thought, but this could be down to a bad SATA / IDE driver. Check your motherboard manufacturer's website for an update and see if it cures it.

[2Cold Scorpio]

I rather like both of my Lite-On drives (mainly the SATA DVD one; my IDE CD-RW drive doesn't get used a lot). I've had no problems playing movies, and they aren't that loud IMO (then again, my case has 5 fans all blowing full-blast all the time, and when I play games, I crank my 8800GT's fan up to 100&#37.

However, on the next go-around, I'm looking at Samsung (assuming they make good Blu-Ray drives, that is, since I see my Lite-On DVD drive works with every DVD format I've used (and has Lightscribe! ), and I like it, and it'll be that old CD-RW drive that gets replaced.