while quiet during front-end navigation and media playback, it's definitely not silent. Fan whirr is mostly a non-issue in a living room environment, but at close quarters it is definitely noticeable. Spinning up a Blu-ray game is more of the same - audible, but not unduly annoying. On our unit at least, drive noise seemed to be increased over our in-house launch PS3 units. Increased noise from the drive on the latest model is to be expected bearing in mind that the disc is now behind a thin piece of plastic as opposed to running inside an enclosed unit.
