I think the heatsink fan is actually the loudest. That and the one on the GeForce 6800GT. I’m still feeling this whole box out. Either way, it’s rather quiet. You can hear it, but I have it right on the desk with the fan side facing me. If that were facing the other way (not doable with this desk), it’d be so quiet I’d hardly know it’s on.
The MSI motherboard was really nicely packaged and everything was marked well. It’s similar to the old EPoX 8KHA+ that was in my last box in that respect. EPoX also had pretty good documentation with that board IIRC. It was also rock solid. The MSI seems pretty good so far. I’m glad I got the capability to do SLI later too.
–Dave