Pros: Capable of burning up to 8.7-GB with Verbatim (MKM) DVD+R9 media. Fast ripper with both DVD and CD media.

Cons: Noisy, but what drive isn't nowadays?

Overall Review: Sony/Optiarc/NEC will be out of the optical drive business at the end of March 2013, so this drive won't be available any longer down the line.

Pros: Capable of burning up to 10x with the proper Blu-ray burner.

Cons: Of the two burners I own, only the Pioneer (206) would burn it well, the LiteOn (iHBS212) doesn't.

Overall Review: These TDK Blu-ray discs are actually RITEK-BR3-000, which aren't known for longevity. Was hoping to get TDK MID, but ended up with Ritek. It really comes down to how the writing strategy within the burner's firmware handles the media. Pioneer has always dealt better with average quality discs such as Ritek.

Overall Review: The old CPU wasn't Win11 ready, so updated to this Picasso (6M20FH stepping) APU without changing the rest of the hardware. Had to adjust some BIOS settings in order to POST with the same DDR4, but once set, computer booted and reinstalled Win10 in UEFI BIOS mode, CSM disabled, and TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled. Works great with a separate GPU card as well.

Pros: The 4-port angled connectors are very nice to have all cables oriented in one general direction. The external eSATA ports are nice to have in case two internal ports aren't used. Very simple to set up and price was right, compared to an incompatible one found from a local store.

Cons: None really.

Overall Review: Primarily used to run 4 optical SATA drives. Flashed the Base BIOS onto it through real DOS. Although the exact Flash chip (EN29LV040A, 4-Mb) wasn't listed as an option, but a compatible one was found. Be sure to let the flash tool return a '0' to indicate a successful attempt.

Pros: A Lite-On 20A3P in disguise with many features that are settable. More quiet than previous LO drives and burns very well on quality media.

Cons: IDE interface which may turn people away.

Overall Review: One of the many 20x drives that has a "fun" factor if one is willing to play around with it.

Pros: Great upgrade from a single core. Both cores run very cool with a good aftermarket cooler.

Cons: N/A.

Overall Review: Had to reinstall XP since it didn't recognize one core after powering up, though BIOS saw it fine.