Motherboard and

C_Ronaldo

i was wondering if anyone knows anything about motherboards, im trying to find out what i need to look for when im trying to find out what cd/dvd drive is compatible with the motherboard i have in mind

the thread title was meant to say motherboard and optical drive

Browntoa

any drive should be compatable...optical drive is a generic term for any DVD/CD/CDRW/DVDRW drive

C_Ronaldo

yes i know, i meant to say cdrw/dvd rw, so any drive would do right,

timread

Any common, current motherboard should have primary and secondary IDE connectors (certainly if it's a consumer motherboard and not a server motherboard).

I'd guess about 98% of CDRW/DVDRW drives are still IDE. The alternative is the newer SATA interface... but these are more expensive, and CDRW/DVDRW drives don't really need the increased bandwidth that SATA offers to run perfectly well. Hard drives definitely do benefit from using SATA.

What motherboard are you looking at? AMD or Intel?

C_Ronaldo

the board is this one

http://www.misco.co.uk/productinformation/~110288~WW~es~/Gigabyte%20965P-DQ6%20Socket%20LGA775/Intel%20965P/4xDDR2%20800/Dual%20PCI-E%20x16/SATA%20II/ATX.htm

C_Ronaldo

are sata cd drive sscarce, im looking but cant find one

Chippy_Minton

C_Ronaldo wrote:

http://www.misco.co.uk/productinformation/~110288~WW~es~/Gigabyte%20965P-DQ6%20Socket%20LGA775/Intel%20965P/4xDDR2%20800/Dual%20PCI-E%20x16/SATA%20II/ATX.htm

1 x UDMA ATA 100/66/33 connector - another name for IDE, that's your CD/DVD drive connector.

C_Ronaldo

Chippy_Minton wrote:

1 x UDMA ATA 100/66/33 connector - another name for IDE, that's your CD/DVD drive connector.

chippy cheers, i saw sata in the title for the motherboard and it got me worried as my cd drive mentioned IDE not sata

timread

LOL - in the interests of money saving, you can get that motherboard for £135 inc VAT from here:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=437657

If you particularly want a SATA DVDRW drive, Scan also stock 2 SATA CD/DVDRW drives - a Plextor, which is very expensive at £70.84, and a Samsung which is actually about the same as IDE drives - £23.49 inc VAT. The Samsung is here:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=368150

I haven't seen any 3rd party reviews of this model, but Samsung DVD Writers are normally reviewed pretty well.