Tray loading or slot loading? 12x or 16x dvd?

[RgrPark]

I'm trying to add a dvd-rom drive to my rig and was wonfering if there's a perfomance difference between tray loading and slot loading drives, namely the pioneer branded ones that i'm interested in... Also, does it matter if you have a 12x or 16x speed drive? i heard all you need is 2x speed for watching movies and that's what dvds are good for now days anyway... any helpful inputs?

 

[bacillus]

there's no difference in performance between slot & tray dvd drives.
a fast dvd drive comes in handy if you want to copy a cd on the fly using the burner's fastest writing rate without increasing the chances of getting buffer underruns.
btw, some folk have commented that the x16 drives are noisy!

 

[SiliconVandal]

16x Slot load. It's noisy, but I love mine..

The 12x is noisy too..the 16x is more high pitched though.

 

[Bryan]

My 16x Toshiba is whisper quiet, quieter even than my Plextor 12x burner.

 

[bacillus]

I should have mentioned that the Toshiba models are quieter & fully clone cd compatible!

 

[sharkeeper]

Be careful with the slot loaders if you have young ones in the house! I remember getting a call from my brother in law a few days before last Christmas. He tried to watch a movie and when he put the disk in the drive it only went in half way at first and the drive was making strange noises. He took the drive out and couldn't find anything wrong so he called me up.

I opened the drive and found about six or seven poker chips inside! His kids were putting poker chips in the slot when he wasn't around! Lucky him, I was able to remove all the (poker) chips and the thing (Pioneer SCSI 303S) fired right up. I connected it to my system and put in Lethal Weapon 4 and it worked no problem. He was lucky. Those poker chips could've been something worse that could've hosed the drive!

He said he's gonna either look for a case with a sliding cover or a tray loader in the future.

Cheers!