Well we are never going to agree, maybe you have damaged your hearing being in the construction business
, but I CAN hear the fan's I have and they are not crap ones either. My room is silent, I can bearly hear my monitors cathode ray tube buzzing if I turn my head sideways and really strain. The only item that makes a "noise" in the PC is the HDD which is rated at 2.0 bels (accordibg to the manufacture). This I don't notice unless I get near to the PC, but the fans I do. As said it's the type of noise not just it's db rating.
Have you ever had a TV that has a whistiling component? that probably wouldn't register on a DB meter but can be very obvious and annoying.
I live in the contry in the UK and wild life, traffic noise etc is not a issue, I do have a silent eviroment 90% of the time except for the PC which is why I wanted to remove the fan noise.
Your heat problem must be the particular motherboard design, because both Abit KT7a & MSI K7N 420 have been run fanless for a few months each without issue, not that I'm volt modding mine.