good point mr. cather.
manfac. ratings are usually undependible..
but personally, i really can't stand any of my 30-32dba fans..
*sorry if i go off topic..* my father did a study on decibles and human hearing for his master degree in medicine, he reaseach shows that a background of 30+dba can affect your sleep patterns at night, like most of us here, we have our computers in our rooms. Also, any subjected to long term background noise of 40dba or higher tends to affect you mentally, although not loud enough to effect you physically (ear drum damage). I maybe paranoid but even with a 'rated' computer of 27dba, i can't keep my computer on and sleep.