hi all, do i need 80-wire ide cable for a 50x cdrom drive? or is there no different between 40-wire and 80-wire cable when dealing with cdrw/cdrom drive?(read/write speed) thanks

40-wire is sufficient for any optical drive, but you can use 80-wire. I always use 80-wire cables in case I happen to change the configuration later on to include a hard-drive. Michael J

If you already have a 40-wire cable use it, if you'll be buying the cable new, go for an 80-wire. Do not type anything in this space.

in my experience it seems to be the mobo that often dictates whether you need 40 or 80 wire cable. on the newer mobos you seem to get messages on the screen when you use a 40 wire cable. Sometimes it actually mentions '80 conductor cable' or similar in the error message or something more obscure like 'unsupported ATAPI device'that is then cured by swapping 40 wire cable for 80 wire. The same drives will often work fine on olb mobos with 40 wire cables.