Yes, usually they make quite a lot of physical noise as in disc spinning.
These are intended to be used at very high speeds and not 'real time' spinning as CD players but they can be used that way which makes them less noisy and about as quiet as a normal CD player unless the connected PC buffers the whole song or CD in a short time.
These are intended for archiving, backup or using CD/DVD media with laptop/PC that don't have their own drive.