It really depends on the drives in question. I have a 40x drives that are almost completely silent and 8x drives that require ear protection (not to mention clamping down the system to make sure it doesn't vibrate off the table...). So YMMV, if you can pick and choose, just choose the quietest one. If not, slowing down a noisy drive will generally make it quieter.

Tbh though I treat CD-Rom drives like HDDs: either authenticity isn't required, in which case CF cards & similar are vastly more practical (and reliable), or it's an integral part of the experience with all the dodgy noises involved, in which case early 00's drives that sound like a jet preparing to take off are period correct and desirable.

Aside from this being totally subjective (what's "too noisy" for you?) ...and relative... (how loud is the rest of your computer, and how near is it when you're playing?) ... I would just suggest going with a good drive. When you're looking at drives where lowest-price and biggest number on the front panel were the primary selling points (LG, BenQ, Asus, etc.), then yeah, it's going to be loud. It's also more likely to be the drive that shatters a disc into a thousand tiny pieces by spinning at high RPMs even when it's not properly balanced. OK, maybe not so much at 16x, but those drives you see in a pile of mid-2000s cruft that just say "OMG!1! 56X!!! 🤣" on the tray, and don't have a distinguishable brand marking anywhere... yeah, I wouldn't use one of those on a dare. That's a good way to end up with a shard of Leisure Suit Larry in your eye.

OTOH, a Plextor 40X... yes, please.

One thing I haver noticed about optical drives is that dvd drives reading cds seems to be much quieter compared to a cd drive reading cds.

Loudness is pretty subjective, yes. You could just wear noise-cancelling earphones and even a 52x ODD probably wouldn't be horrible.

I'd personally stick to 24x and down, though. Someone else mentioned discs shattering at high speeds, but >32x drives from the early 2000s also take longer to spin up to full RPM than the slower ones do, and still don't read from the disc while doing so. This might be annoying if playing a game/using an application that accesses its CD only once in a while, and freezes while waiting for the drive to spool up and send data.

CDBeQuiet can slow down some drives.
http://cdbq.dosforum.de/

In Windows 9x there is also Nero DriveSpeed.

I personally like <= 12X drives that use CLV instead of CAV.

Wat...are you using the PC case as the head-rest of your chair or something? Just up the speaker volume dude.

Not sure how the tech improved so much that a dvd drive that can read cds even at 40x speed can be so quiet while reading them while cd drive at 40x speed sound like a hair dryer.

Tolerances. A DVD has a higher density medium, so it needs to be much more accurate, both when positioning the head and when spinning the disc. That accuracy includes less vibration, so less noise, even when using plain old CDs. Same reason the Plextors of this world are quieter.

Some cd-rom drives used a beam splitter to read faster than the spinning speed. Some of the 40-52x speed i've had through the years were decently quiet. For older drives I do prefer 8x speed or so.

lost77 wrote:

Some cd-rom drives used a beam splitter to read faster than the spinning speed. ...

Pretty sure it was only those notoriously unreliable Kenwood TrueX "72x" drives that used that technique...

dionb wrote:

Tolerances. A DVD has a higher density medium, so it needs to be much more accurate, both when positioning the head and when spinning the disc. That accuracy includes less vibration, so less noise, even when using plain old CDs. Same reason the Plextors of this world are quieter.

My plextor cd drive from 2001 px-w2410ta unfortunately is very noisy. That is why I didn't recommend it here.

SW-SSG wrote:

lost77 wrote:

Some cd-rom drives used a beam splitter to read faster than the spinning speed. ...

Pretty sure it was only those notoriously unreliable Kenwood TrueX "72x" drives that used that technique...

Maybe it was just down to improved vibration damping then. I can at least remember a few 40-48x lite-on CD-Rs that I found quite acceptable, about on par with nice 16x drives.

Worst I have tried was a 36x really cheap drive, that one rattled the whole computer case.

Baoran wrote:

One thing I haver noticed about optical drives is that dvd drives reading cds seems to be much quieter compared to a cd drive reading cds.

I had noticed the same thing. Dionb already explained why DVD drives typically are.

But for CDROM drives, I tended to find drives of up to 24x speed to be in the quiet bracket. From 40x and up these drives tended to get loud.
Of course this was mostly a rule of thumb. I tended to match optical drives more with its bezel color so it matches the case's front bezel's color 😜

For me the annoyance is more the delay from the constant spin up /spin down in games that don't constantly access the drive.
But most my PC's are under the desk and I like to No-CD games after installing so drives don't get that much use and not right in front of my ears either

SW-SSG wrote:

Loudness is pretty subjective, yes. You could just wear noise-cancelling earphones and even a 52x ODD probably wouldn't be horrible.

I'd personally stick to 24x and down, though. Someone else mentioned discs shattering at high speeds, but >32x drives from the early 2000s also take longer to spin up to full RPM than the slower ones do, and still don't read from the disc while doing so. This might be annoying if playing a game/using an application that accesses its CD only once in a while, and freezes while waiting for the drive to spool up and send data.

This is my main issue with faster drives. Not that I use physical discs very often, SHSUCDHD and Daemon-Tools 3.47 covers most of my needs, but when I do, I prefer 4x or slower.

It's about nostalgia for me. What drive did I have during some particular era, or what drives did I find particularly cool and unique? MKE CR-562/3 2x, Creative Hex Speed, DXR2 DVD, then a bunch of Plextor SCSI CD-RW, PlexCombo CD/DVD, and UltraPlex drives, Yamaha's one entry into the CD-RW market that did the ultra-high quality CD-R burning and Disc T@2 (and a nifty purple access LED), and finally the LG BD / HD-DVD combo drives.

Aside from that, Alcohol 120% is my favorite CD-ROM. I rarely use my original discs. They get ripped, put back in their cases, and shelved. Everyday use is via ISOs stored on my NAS. With the spinning disks located in the laundry room, you can't hear CD access at all. 😁

Drives faster than 32x are too loud for me, especially CD burners that are reading CDs. My old Lite-On DVD Burner is louder than my laptop's slim DVD Burner when reading CDs.