PCI-E Optical Drives? Do they exist?

[SirTheo60]

A lot of modern cases are shipping with no mounts for optical drives in the front. No room for DVD drives, CD, Blu-ray. I am well aware most physical media is dying off, but with the amount the government still uses (usb flash drives being completely prohibitive) mastered burned discs are still very much necessary, especially in my line of work. I am curious if a PCI-E DVD/CD drive exists? Is one even possible? Is there anything in PCI-E slot tech that prevents optical drives being used? I would find a optical drive in the back of my PC very handy in the those few used cases where it is necessary, reducing the cable clutter and desk clutter of having a external USB powered DVD drive.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

[Electronics Wizardy]

No because the pcie slot isn't wide enough. There are usb ones.

[Oshino Shinobu]

While there's not really anything stopping it from being used, I don't see the application for it. You'd have to take off the side panel every time you want to insert or eject a disk. At that point, a USB optical drive positioned on top of the PC seems much more practical. 

 

If you're thinking of having the disk tray at the back, it would only work with Minidisc as full size DVD/CD would be too large to fit. 

[zMeul]

4 minutes ago, SirTheo60 said:

A lot of modern cases are shipping with no mounts for optical drives in the front.

cases with 5.25" bays still exist - the optical drive is not the only thing that can be mounted there

 

i own a NZXT Source 530: https://www.nzxt.com/products/source-530

[SirTheo60]

7 hours ago, zMeul said:

cases with 5.25" bays still exist - the optical drive is not the only thing that can be mounted there

 

i own a NZXT Source 530: https://www.nzxt.com/products/source-530

My point is a lot of beautiful cases with fans and filters in the front for airflow, with no holes for a optic drive. Like the deep cool genome. I've lined up slim style DVD drives from laptops and they fit fine in the pcie slot space in the back of the case. I don't see why it wouldn't fit. And as far as side panel removal, it would have the button on the outside just like a laptop DVD drive

[SirTheo60]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

No because the pcie slot isn't wide enough. There are usb ones.

It is wide enough for laptop slim style ones

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, SirTheo60 said:

It is wide enough for laptop slim style ones

no it isn't. Try to put a disk through a open slot, You can't

[AshleyAshes]

55 minutes ago, SirTheo60 said:

It is wide enough for laptop slim style ones

Uhh...

 

The total bracket width is exactly 125mm or 12.5cm, and that's the ENTIRE length, once you subtract how much extends past the opening at either end, you are at about 11.5cm.  CD, DVD, and BD disc are all exactly 12cm across (Excluding the 8cm mini variety), so even the DISC wouldn't slide through an expansion bracket even if you were using a trayless system.

 

You would need some kind of specialize 8cm only drive and the engineering needed for such a niche optical drive it's just nuts.

Truth be told, if you are operating IT in an environment where the workstations lack optical drives and even a USB optical drive isn't an option, you have two solutions:

1) Replace the workstations with one's with optical, because your rules render them unserviceable.  Then smack whoever pitched the idea of paying money for unserviceable workstations.

2) Change the rules to allow USB optical drives.

[zMeul]

6 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

The total bracket width is exactly 125mm or 12.5cm, and that's the ENTIRE length, once you subtract how much extends past the opening at either end, you are at about 11.5cm.  CD, DVD, and BD disc are all exactly 12cm across (Excluding the 8cm mini variety), so even the DISC wouldn't slide through an expansion bracket even if you were using a trayless system.

laptop DVD/CD/BRD drive width: 130mm - measured on my HP laptop

PCIe bracket opening on the back of my case: 95mm

a optical disk is 120mm diameter

 

@SirTheo60 there is no way you can fit a optical drive unit inside a PCIe slot

the 2nd thing: why would there even be optical units that open on the back of the PC!?

 

you said beautiful cases .. in a gov institution - does not compute!

[SirTheo60]

Special operations has the money to get what you want. I got some choices to make, but I wanted the optic drive to stay.... damn shame.Guess we will have to stick to some HAF-Xs... These are custom geospatial workstations I am putting together for GIS guys..

[SirTheo60]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Especially the size diagram. 

[SirTheo60]

Just trying to pitch the Titan XP against the 1080 currently to justify the price difference. It would blow away any compute requirements they have for map rendering and imagery analysis.

[Princess Luna]

5 minutes ago, SirTheo60 said:

Just trying to pitch the Titan XP against the 1080 currently to justify the price difference. It would blow away any compute requirements they have for map rendering and imagery analysis.

Titans are love :3

[SirTheo60]

They refused the 6950X. So upset. Had to go with 6900k............. My OIC spit his coffee out when I said 1700 dollar processor all over the conference room table.

[SirTheo60]

And thats without government pricing inflation....

[InternetEntity]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe I have one.

Or, if I was so minded, a beatiful empty clot to do stupid things with GPUs... no idea what sort of PCI-E slot it would be though. I’ll go out on a limb and say not a high speed one.

 

The laptop is an Acer ES1-711-P3LV