What is a "lotta noise"? You have to have fans to cool the high power chips, there is a trade off between cooling and noise.

Pentium 4 1.9 Gig / 478 pin 400Mhz FSB
Shuttle Motherboard
Via chipset P4x266 VT8233 DDRam Support
Windows XP (home edition)
DDRam 768 Meg
WD 80 gig HD ATA 100
Gainward GF3 Powerpack Golden Sample/64 meg
LiteOn 24x10x40 CD-RW
Pinacle Firewire Card
Santa Cruz Sound Card (4127 beta drivers)
Linksys Lan Card
Dell 991 Monitor
Microtek 3700 Scanner
HP 1100 Printer
Logitech Pro 3000 web cam

Other:
XPSB1000r
XP home
384 megs PC700 Rdram
60 gig maxtor HD
DVD-Rom
Sony CD-RW
Gforce 2 pro 64meg

The noise sounds like a lawnmower. I also bought a Dimension 4300 1.8 GHZ and unless you look at the monitor, its impossible to tell that the computer is on. That's how quiet the machine is. My Dimension 8200 2.0 GHZ is just the opposite. I can't imagine the additional processor speed for the 8200 warrants the excessive noise levels.

I had a technician come over three times to fix the fan, and for some reason, it did not work. Dell ended up exchanging my tower and all problems are solved. If the the noise level is irritatingly loud (you will always hear some noise, but there should not be a buzz or hum), I suggest you call customer support and explain the situation. It helps to be nice, patient and persistent. If you happen to talk to a less helpfull person, ask to talk to the supervisor or call back and try again with another customer support rep.

I had the exact same problems with my 8200, both the CPU cooling fan and the GForce3 cooling fan were making unbearable motorboat/lawn mower sound. The CPU cooling fan was fixed by getting DELL to replace it with the NMB model. The GForce3 problem I took care of myself. It seems that if there is a card installed next to the GForce3 card, the space is not sufficant for the turbine fan to do it's job. I moved what was my Santa Cruz sound card from the slot next to the Gforce3 card to the only slot left on the end. Now the GForce fan has more space and it runs quiet. The machine is not dead silent, but it don't sound like a lawn mower or outboard motor boat anymore. Nice normal fan purr.

Hope this helps! Have fun.


NOTE: Not to worry! If you move a card, upon restart of the computer "Plug and Pray!" will see it as new hardware and do a reinstall of the drivers and change the IRQ settings for that card.