Totally serious. If I have a gaming PC, my main source for buying games will of course be steam. I'm not gonna use my PC for movies and I don't see why I would need an optical drive for drivers since everyone recommends you download them from online sources. When you got your 750ti, 980, or R9 290, did you actually use the DVD for the driver? It seems like and extra $20-$40 that I don't need to spend. Am I totally wrong? Let me know your opinion.
Nope, they're totally worthless for the most part. I find it best to download drivers directly from the manufacturer's website so they're actually up to date.
When I built my PC. I bought an optical drive just to install the OS, after i did that, i removed it from my PC, and never used it again. and i never had to re-install it to fix an issue. so my recommendation, you don't really need it, and if you do buy it guarantee you 9 times out of 10 you aren't going to use it. or you're going to remove it after you use it.
You don't need it. So long as you have access to another PC to make a USB install stick you don't even need it to install or repair your OS.
If you don't have a need for an optical drive, then don't get one. I occasionally have use for one since I sometimes buy physical games, and I also have a good number of older games that I may want to install again at some point. Plus I use my drive for backups and the occasional dvd/blu ray as well.
They can be handy at times. You should always at least have an external USB Blu-ray (or just a plain DVD) drive hanging around for those rare occasions. Honestly I have a 5.25 DVD drive and a SATA cable handy in the bookshelf under my computer just in case.
I do use mine a fair amount actually for ripping music that I've bought a physical copy of which is all the music I own except for one album.
I also use it for first time LAN drivers because it's quicker than going onto your motherboards website and finding the driver and putting it on a mem stick and finding a USB header that's driver-less. Also fort old components that have drivers on a disk so there's no point trying to find them.
But my case is quite uncommon and I wouldn't get a Optical Drive just for LAN drivers.
As long as you are buying new and relevant things then all the drivers will be on the internet and you won't need an optical drive. If you need an Optical Drive for anything else then you'd know what it is and would have on already.
USB
Couple of years ago, when messing around with my hardware, I did not put back the optical drive into my chassis. Put it in an USB dock on my desk. There it has been. Rarely used. Ripping music from CD was the last time I used it. Drivers from CD? No. Booting from CD? No. USB is your friend. USB3 is just as fast as the optical drive is, no need for SATA really. One less thing in the chassis to mess with. KISS.
I have to disagree with most of you. I think optical drive is one of the most basic things each computer should have.
I use it to install OS and I heard that Intel has disabled booting from USB devices on some of the new chip-sets. So if you have an intel board with new chip-set and you can't boot from USB, then you have a problem. Unless your pc has optical drive.
Besides I play some non-steam games that require to insert the DVD to launch.
Regarding the drivers, I recently bought the AMD R9 290 and when installed the latest driver from their website it was unstable as hell. I got black screen every 10 minutes. And at that time there was no other driver available on the site. So i installed the old driver from the CD and HURRAZ! it works. If i didn't have my optical drive I would be fucked for a long time.
I stopped using optical media more than 8 years ago and never put optical drives in my builds ever since, never looked back.
They also make your front panel look ugly.