Yeah, optical drives are pretty damned loud. But that's what Nero Drivespeed is for.
Anyhow, I suspect the anti-noise obsession is like the path to Zen enlightenment: before you hear the sound of one hand clapping, you frequently fool yourself into believing you already have. Reading through my early posts at SPCR, you'll find a lot of "hey, this made a big improvement, and my PC's getting really quiet" posts. The first part was pretty accurate, but the second not so much. In my case, I kept silencing, and my PCs have become the quietest fan-cooled computers I've ever experienced. But they're
not inaudible.
