MSI 52x CD-RW

[Big B]

Hot Hardware takes MSI's newest R/W drive for a spin, pitting it against a TDK 48x burner.

One of the beauties of CD-RW drives is that even the latest and greatest come in at a very affordable price point. The MSI drive comes in on various search engines around $70! Not too shabby if you're looking to upgrade. MSI has been in the PC Enthusiast market for some time, churning out motherboards and graphics cards at regular intervals, but is a bit new to the optical drive arena. With that said, the MSI drive didn't quite hit the mark in all its categories. It seemed to struggle with different media types but once it found a CDR it liked, we did see true 52X performance. Read speeds were decent but not stellar. However, most folks have a second CD or DVD drive in their chassis for reading media, so this is metric is a little less important for a CD-RW drive. After all is said and done, the MSI CR52-A2 CD-RW drive is a solid drive, with good performance, but if you already have a 40X or 48X CD-RW drive, then the upgrade may not be worth it. On the other hand, if you are building a new system or upgrading from a few evolutions behind, at the current price point, the MSI CDR52-A2 is a good value.

It's a quick read, and if you're in the market for something faster than that crusty 4x burner, this will make leaps and bounds in your burning times.
Linky.

 

[xen_chris]

i would never buy a cd-rw from msi. they are known 4 their motherboards, not cd-rw or else.
if i dindn't want the best (now i am the proud owner of a plextor 48x), i would buy somethign cheap but good. example: lite-on or lg.
it is like buying a motherboard from lg: you do it at your own risk.
ps: now i have the plex, but teac 40x just died on me, after 7 months of using.