What's the best optical drive to get?

[Tumble]

The one I've got atm, 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.

They're all about the same price, less than £20, so which manufacturer do I go for?

[PeterStoba]

Sony/LG/Optiarc are all good, but really you can't go wrong with any of them so long as they have 20x speed.

[staffsMike]

I go Samsung these days. The drives available for my most recent builds were the quietest around so I stuck with them

[HSK]

another one for samsung. for the before mentioned reasons.

[NovaSphere]

Nowadays there are no bad drives anymore ^^

But if you want the best for the same price, id go for the Samsung or an LG, Optiarc is also pretty good.

[Saracen]

Never had a problem, personally, with Pioneer, or with NEC (Optiarc now IIRC). Some of the best CD burners were LiteOn, but I've not been so impressed with their DVD drives.

As NovaSphere said, I'm not sure there are bad drives any more. But at the prices, I'm not sure any of them are of the quality they were. At least to a degree, you get what you pay for and they're essentially throwaway items these days. That's why I always have a spare or two in the cupboard.

[Flibb]

I think the difference between models / brands is minimal, I just ordered a pioneer from scan

went for
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Revi...2642&PageId=37

[Zak33]

SATA tumble.....SATA!

[Tumble]

It is!! I got a SATA LiteOn DVD burner on the strength of the CD burner I had in the old rig.. but it's really really slow.. it's even shocking playing back movie DVD's - you get an echo, epecially from text on the screen or movement (which is pretty much anything). I think maybe it's just a Friday Afternoon drive, but as with all things, I wouldn't have another one just in case...

[TheReaFireblade]

Pioneer, LG, +/or Samsung for me too

[Funkstar]

I just bought a second hand Plextor writer, can't remember the model name though.

Nothing touches them as far as audio extraction goes. but then that probably isn't a concern if you just want to install COD4 quicker

[timlee79]

Samsung 22x SH-S223F sata drive all the way for me

[gazza.ladra]

teac used to be very good ages ago, sadly no dvdrw from them anymore.

i have lg. no problems there

[Lourdes]

The Pioneer drives have been consistently good for a long, long time now.

[tefster]

I normally go ASUS DRW, had a few of these now and no problems with them.

[SSK]

i have lg and optiarc...no problems so far for a couple years