360s Receive New, Quieter Disc Drives

New Xbox 360 systems are receiving a new, silent disc drive.

A forum post at Xbox Scene reveals that Xbox 360s manufactued after November could contain the new BenQ-LiteOn-Philips VAD6038 disc drive, a quieter, faster alternative to the Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG drives. The new drives are based on a Philips design used in some development kits.

Microsoft has not confirmed the new disc drive is in production, but has already guaranteed that 360s would seen small hardware improvements, including a new, cooler CPU chip. A combination of both a cooler chip and quieter drive will hopefully reduce the system's noise and overheating problems, which have been major complaints for many of the system's owners.