Slimline DVD-ROM in a 5.25" bay

dragonii · Post by **dragonii** » Thu May 05, 2005 8:32 am

Hi,

Looked everywhere but can't find an adapter to fit a notebook dvd-rom drive in a 5,25'' bay. Any suggestions ?

Thanks in advance.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Thu May 05, 2005 7:49 pm

Why do you want to use a notebook DVD drive in a desktop? Is it quiter than desktop drives? I doubt you intend to place it on foam, or sandwich in between foam since then you probably wouldn't need to/be able to use an adaptor.

What kind of adaptor do you need, just for mounting it, or for connecting the IDE and power cables too?

I would guess that such an adaptor probably isn't available because no-one really sees a need for it. With notebook hard drives, I think most people would agree that the adaptors can be very useful if someone needs to use a hard drive(for the data on that specific drive) which was in a laptop(most likely if the laptop was upgraded, broken or sold).

And WELCOME TO SPCR.

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Thu May 05, 2005 8:18 pm

But if you really want to do it anyway, here's how:

First link
Second link

(Disclaimer : I have no experience with this store)

My suggestion : ebay your slim drive and buy a regular one and pocket the difference, unless you have some compelling reason to use the slim drive.

dragonii · Post by **dragonii** » Thu May 05, 2005 11:55 pm

The main reason is power requirements. A typical DVD-ROM, when in use, goes to about 20W while a slimline one stays at 5W. The goal here, as you can image, is to build the most silent PC ever (home cinema setup). Here are the main elements I count putting in:

- Notebook HD
- Notebook DVD-ROM
- Pentium M
- Passive cooled VGA card

Thanks for the link, btw !!

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Sat May 07, 2005 4:14 pm

many of the smaller M-ATX cases are made to fit the slim cd drives.. if u went for one of those then all you would need is an ide adaptor.. for that search ebay for laptop cd IDE adapter, or similar

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Sat May 07, 2005 5:59 pm

I'd recommend getting a regular drive. Who cares about another 15 watt? That's not that much and not likely to affect your power draw. Slimline DVDs on the other hand have lots of disadvantages to offset addtional 15 watts, first, they are usually very slow, no more than 24x for CD/8x for DVD, not a problem when you are watching movies, but believe me, it's a pain in the butt to copy a full 700 CD which takes 10 full minutes.

They are also generally much noisier, so if you want a quiet operation you must ensure that your drive support slowing down while watching movies/listening to music. And you also must consider that slimline DVDs are also more fragile, unreliable (I for example seen slim DVD drives that would stop functioning when overheated), and more likely to scratch your DVD. All in all, I don't think it's worth getting slimline DVD, go get a regular drive.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sat May 07, 2005 7:47 pm

I don't think DVD drives, except "combo drives", which are pretty much gone now, normally use that much power. I can't say how they do use, I tried to check some newegg photos but none are zoomed in very much, and I checked on samsungs and NEC's websites, but the spec lists and datasheets don't give power figures, even the giant TIF photos of the NEC drives aren't clear enough.

Also, I'm pretty sure that speed throtling would reduce power consumption.

Edit: scrach that, found something: http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/Informati ... manual.asp

On samsung's site it says their DVDROM and CDRW drives pull 1.5 amps from both the +12 and +5 rails, and combo drives 1.5*12V and 1.2*5V. They don't give any figures for their DVDRW drives though.

Ephemeron · Post by **Ephemeron** » Sun May 08, 2005 9:43 am

They are also generally much noisier. . .

Could you please verify this with some empirical data? I'm thinking about getting a slim dvd burner for my next rig.

The whine of my full-size lite-on burner when it preps to burn or read is hideous, and it's only a 52x32x52x CD-RW.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:46 am

That's not surprising, Lite-ons are very noisy:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ght=liteon

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ght=liteon

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ght=liteon

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:16 pm

Ephemeron wrote:
They are also generally much noisier. . .
Could you please verify this with some empirical data? I'm thinking about getting a slim dvd burner for my next rig.

The whine of my full-size lite-on burner when it preps to burn or read is hideous, and it's only a 52x32x52x CD-RW.

They are just noisier. My dad owns two laptops, I own one and at max speed they are just as noisy or noisier than various optical drives I have at home in my desktop. Keep in mind though that slim drives are 24/8x at the most, so you are getting half the speed at the same level of noise. Or there is another way to think about it, you can slow down a regular drive down to 24-20x and it will be almost silent, slim drive at those speeds will rev like a turbo jet. Depends on the drive of course, but desktop drives have much better quality nowadays and you always have more choice, because there are very few manufacturers that make slim drives, I can only think of LG and toshiba. All in all, I think regular 5.25 drive will be much better choice for quiet PC.

Ephemeron · Post by **Ephemeron** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:42 pm

NEC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827152028

SONY

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827131254

Your point is good, though, despite the fact that you haven't identified the models you have heard.

Thing is, I could use the lower heat output and small footprint in my next pc to save space.