PRICE: OEM-$37.99

ASUS Is a company that has been manufacturing PC systems and components for decades. In 2005 ASUS sold over 52 million motherboards worldwide. ASUS is a well known company in the computer technology field and they are also considered one of the best motherboard manufacturers. A month ago I purchased the “1608p2″ to place in a new system build. This is my first time using an ASUS optical drive first hand and I am impressed. The drive sports: 16X DVD+R, 8X DVD+RW, 8X DVD+R DL, 16X DVD-R, DVD-ROM 16X, DVD-RAM 2X DVD-ROM 40X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2M Cache IDE 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 2X DVD-RAM Read.

This is a standard IDE drive and is supplied with either a black or beige face plate dependant on your selection. I have used this drive to rip DVDs to my HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and make video backups by burning the *.VOB files to VIDEO_TS flawlessly. I have also used this drive to backup many large image files as well as web content, documents, saved games and such. I’ve been burning on Memorex 8x DVD/R’s at 7,550KB/s consistently. This drive also supports the use of DVD/RAM which is NOT DVD/(Random Access Memory) but is DVD/(Read-And-Write Memory) Similar to how a hard disk works, You can read and write memory to a DVD/RAM disk without the use of burning software like Nero. Keep in mind DVD/RAM will not be as fast or stable as your computers hard disk drive. Overall I am happy with the combination of price/speed and compatibility of this drive. However I have had what we nerds call a couple “coasters” which is just a failed burn and results in the loss of a DVD/R disk. I would say that this drive is 96% efficient. Because this drive isn’t a top model and does have a few VERY MINOR issues I still cannot bring myself to give it a 5 out of 5. I’m looking forward to seeing how ASUS does in the future in the way of optical drives.