DVD Burner
 

Lordy,
I've used Plextor drives for the last 2-3 years, but now they seem way overpriced. What's the latest drives that are the best to buy?
LiteOn?
LG?
Samsung?
Pioneer?
Not looking at Blu-Ray, just your standard DVD±R SATA workhorse!

Uh-oh, you said "SATA". That poses problems. SATA is not as easy as it probably should be -- there are the various chipsets out there, some of which do not cooperate well with certain burners. VIA, NFORCE and JMICRON chipsets are among those with known problems. ICH9 Intel chipsets are fine. I don't have a complete list of what drive works with what burner -- this might be something that takes experimentation on your part.

Samsung and Pioneer are the two SATA drives that are suggested.

When it comes to IDE (parallel ATA) connections, Sony-branded Samsung drives, Samsung and Pioneer are suggested. Personally, I suggest the Sony DRX-840 (or older DRX-830) drives, or the Pioneer 112 or higher (115-116 are current models).

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There really is no benefit to SATA over IDE, for an optical burner, unless you just don't have an IDE connector.

I'm asking this mainly for a newer build.
The real and only reason I like SATA is for cable
management. I don't believe there is any difference in performance between IDE vs SATA with a optical drive. Given the choice to choose between the two for a harddrive, imo, SATA is a far better and proven choice, but then again, it's just my 2 cents. The newer motherboards have gone away with IDE as well as AGP, but keep in mind that I still use my 'old' system' for all capture and most video work.

SATA is most definitely a superior choice for hard drives. The drives work faster, and come in larger sizes.

It's just the optical drives that have been known to give odd performance/compatibility issues with SATA connections. it mostly depends on the drive/motherboard combination, as to how well everything will work. I believe most boards still come with one IDE connection, and it's mostly intended for optical drives or legacy hard drive connections.

I would stick to Samsung or Pioneer burners, regardless of SATA or IDE. If IDE, I fully suggest the Sony branded SAmsung drives, models mentioned in last post.