Blu-Ray Drives: Quietest 5.25" Tray Models When Playing BD Movies

[chane]

For my new "mid ("mini") tower pc build, I want to use a 5.25" BD drive to play BD movies via https://jriver.com/

Currently, I have free access to Panasonic SW-5584-C and Plextor PX-891SAF
BD drives.

Of course, with the tower several feet from my ears and with my surround sound system going I wouldn't expect much if any drive noise to be noticeable. However, have you used one or more specific models or brands of BD drives, which were found to consistently produce low mechanical or vibration noise when playing 1080p BD movies?

Conversely, which model drives have you found to generate very noticeable noise during BD movie playback?

Also do most BD drives get very warm when playing full length BD movies?

And/or have you noticed if your tower's case fans run any faster/noisier during BD movie playback?

Lastly, do you find that playing (never or rarely burning) BD movies more often on BD drives than playing them on your standalone BD player tends to shorten BD drive life?

[LexInHD]

You likely won't have any problems. Some drives will "thrash" and produce noise when reading a disc, but that's usually only during the initial reading. The Asian market has pro-grade drives that are said to have low-noise/low-vibration characteristics, which consumer drives don't have. Drives will get warm when reading a disc and there's no way around that, but it's unlikely the heat will be an issue, unless you are binge watching constantly or using an internal drive on a laptop/SFF desktop/AIO desktop. Drives will wear out when reading/burning discs, but burning is what makes the most wear/heat and pushes a drive to it's replacement date. As far as system cooling goes, it's really only an issue for video playback when you are using GPU shaders and such, to decode/process video, which doesn't happen for DVD/BD/UHD-BD playback, as doing that puts the GPU into a state equivalent to "gaming", which uses the GPU resources instead of the video decoding hardware built into the GPU.