Re: I have to say...
Quote: "For that matter, I don't AT ALL understand these $2000 tower gaming rigs with NO optical drives, and no drive bays to put one in."
1. Because no one provides software on disks anymore, and haven't done for years, and where the drives did sit in a gaming case, is better served most of the time as an additional cooling intake instead, and is often used for mounting an AIO or water cooling rad. A 5.25 drive is just dead weight for most people, and...
2. It's also not really true, a quick look at cases on CCL online, and filter by external 5.25 bay, and there are 8 pages of cases (20 per page) with at least 1 x 5.25 bay. Reverse the search to only show cases that don't have any 5.25 bays, and there are 10 pages instead. So still around 45% of cases with at least one 5.25 bay. (4 pages for 2 x 5.25 bays or more, and they have two Phanteks with 5 x 5.25 bays each).
And these aren't all some knock-of budget case from brands you've never heard of, these cases with a 5.25 drive bay include brands like Corsair, Phantek, Be Quiet, Fractal Design, Thermaltake and so on.
Personally I don't really use DVDs or Blu-Rays (although I do have a few in a drawer), but I still prefer to buy my music on CDs, and I have a small Samsung USB DVD reader/writer for the occasions when I want to rip a new audio disk, which I can just plug into whichever machine I'm using at the time.