Need a quiet, black, fast CD-RW drive

Ozkar · Post by **Ozkar** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:02 pm

I need a black CD-RW drive for my system, so if any of you have good suggestions, please let me know. I want a quiet, fast and reliable drive, and i'm willing to spend $30-60.

Hellspawn · Post by **Hellspawn** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:21 pm

I usually get liteon units from newegg, very nicely priced, nice shade of black and usually free fedex saver shipping..

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 12:00 am

Lite-On's are very loud. I know, because I've tried three of the latest generation (48246s and 2 pieces of 52327s). Nowhere near "quiet" by any SPCR standard.

Plextor Premium, while much more expensive is also much much quieter. It's available in black.

I'm not sure if LG 48x drives are available in black, but my wife's CDRW LG 48x is also decently quiet, considering it's a 48x CDRW drive.

You will not be able to find a silent new cdrw drive that is fast (48/52x).

Only the least noisy, of which Plextor Premium, LG and perhaps latest Samsungs are among the best choices.

Stay away from LiteOn if you want less noise.

I'm not sure how much drives cost where you live, so I don't know if the above fall within your price bracket.

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 12:25 am

Did you check out the Samsung 52x reviewed at the main site? The OEM version (2MB buffer) is available in black, the retail one (8 MB) doesn't seem to be though.

manalainen · Post by **manalainen** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:20 am

Well,

I would like to say my bit about the Lite-On drives, when playing media files (DVD, .avi files from CD etc.) the drive is very quiet, almost inaudible in my case (I have the LTC-48161H Combo drive). Ok, when the speed increases to max (Transferring files, installing stuff etc.) it gets a lot noisier. Burning CD´s makes some noice also, not as bad as file transfers though. The good thing is that you can limit the maximum speed via programs like NERO.

So far toasting have been very reliable and fast and the reviews I have seen have been very positive.

manalainen

trinitrotoluene · Post by **trinitrotoluene** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:35 am

I have a black LG 48x Combo Drive that has impressed me. You'd hear it spinup if you have a quiet system, but definitely the best I've heard.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:12 am

I'd also recommend the black Plextor Premium. 52x and it's the quietest burner I've ever used, and I've used a lot, including a lot of pretty qiet Plextors. It's somewhat out of your pricerange though. I think they're going for around $90 these days.

kbedwards · Post by **kbedwards** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 10:46 am

This http://www.logicalplus.com/logicalplus/ ... cdco2.html got better reviews than it's faster big brother...and has same quiet technology.

Also, it's cheaper, available with 8mb buffer, in black.

Ozkar · Post by **Ozkar** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 12:15 pm

The Plextor Premium is too expensive and the Lite-on is too loud, so I think i'm going to go with a Samsung, unless I find a better one before thursday.

Does anyone have the Sony cd burner? Is this a good buy??

BTW, i'm also getting a black Sony Floppy Drive from newegg, for $10.99.

kbedwards · Post by **kbedwards** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 12:42 pm

out of curiousity, what black case are you using?

Let me know how that Samsung works out for you, I am thinking about getting it as well to replace a 737 loud Aopen CDRW.

kbedwards · Post by **kbedwards** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:17 am

ozkar, now that I look at more reviews (I am in the same exact boat as you), I like the Samsung 352b a little better, though it IS hard, if not impossible to find the retail ver (8mb cache) in black.

If you look both drives up at neoseeker.com, and read the neoseeker reviews (for consistency), you will get the idea that they like the faster drive better, primarily for the new CD-MRW ability in the new one.

So if you work with CDRW's , I would def say go for the faster drive (though faster typically means louder, so....)

Anyhoo..I guess it comes down to availability. Good luck!

Ozkar · Post by **Ozkar** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:26 pm

kbedwards wrote:out of curiousity, what black case are you using?

I'm using the Antec SLK3700BQE case, which was recommended by SPCR members. I'm very satisfied with it, and now i'm trying to get all the extra components to finish building my PC, that's why I need the CD-RW drive. I'll let you know how the Samsung CD-RW Drive performs.

kbedwards · Post by **kbedwards** » Fri Jan 30, 2004 7:08 am

Wow! $33!? I may have to rethink the 2mb vs 8mb cache between retail and oem...what does cache for an optical drive do anyway?

I assume it is used as a data buffer when burning, but I wonder if it also affects CD read performace?

pqyrz · Post by **pqyrz** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 6:34 pm

newegg.com has the Plextor 52X24X52 non-Premium, i.e. 2 MB cache, in black for $47.00. Anyone have any experience with one of these?

mudboy · Post by **mudboy** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 5:34 am

Samsung SM-348B++

NamJangNamJa · Post by **NamJangNamJa** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 5:47 am

I heard that Nero can control the speed of Sony drives to reduce noise, but not on Samsung. Is it true?

BarCodeBlack · Post by **BarCodeBlack** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 6:04 am

I use a small application called CD-Bremse (or CD-Throttle) to slow down my Samsung SW-252B.

A great application that runs in the systray and loads at startup. It's written by a german (I believe) author so the installation and menus are all a little foreign to me, but it is intuative so installation and configuration are a breeze. Once it's installed and configured, there's nothing left to do.

Good choice with the Samsung....I've been mighty impressed by mine even more so once it's slowed down to 24x which is more than suitable for reading CD's. I never burn at any faster than 6x speed anyhow, just to ensure burn quality.

Hope this helps

Lethal Injection · Post by **Lethal Injection** » Tue Feb 03, 2004 4:26 am

I have the Samsung 52X, much louder than i expected it to be, but much quieter than the LiteOn than i had before (that thing makes so much noise and vibration when burning that i always think the whole case is going to fly off the ground). The Toshiba CDRW's found in Dells are the quietest i've heard.

GenghiS_KhaN · Post by **GenghiS_KhaN** » Tue Feb 03, 2004 11:03 am

the 252b samsung is the quitest one ive had...
Ive had the 52X aopen, 2 older hps, an older samsung and one liteon

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:20 pm

I also suggest Samsung. I bought the Samsung 52X SW-252fen model from Newegg. Pretty quiet compared to my previous drives. They probably aren't the quietest drives around but I believe they have an excellent cost to noise ratio - $35 shipped is hard to beat.