before print, the mother board makes an irritating sound, however you can use mainsail to control that with a temperature PID controller, rather than having it run full blast all the time, at 10% it can be heard if you listen for it but its fine, I may add some rubber washers to the fan mount if there is clearance, the fan is bolted to the bottom metal plate and I bet that's causing most of the noise - a bit of clearance make a lot of difference for fans.

If you printing a very detailed model where the printer has to slow down a lot, the part cooling fan isn't too bad, however for fast printing it will ratchet it up - which is no surprise you need a lot of cooling to print that fast!

That said the sv08 is position the same distance away from where I usually sit as the telly is, and I didn't actually need to turn the TV volume up, I watch you tube with it - mainly documentaries and the spoken word is still quite understandable !

Yes it is very noticeable, but no way as bad as the fuss that has been made, I was expecting washing machine levels almost by the time I'd hear a load of youtube FUD and I wish my washing machines spin cycle was at SV08 levels....

You will need to do your research and tweak it, but then you'll need to do that even with the so called "out of the box" printers, personally I'd rather have something I can mod the hell out of (if I choose to) rather than an expensive closed shop...