Hi,
I have a few Dell notebooks and it seems fan noise is one of their common
characteristics although later models tend to be better than earlier ones. I
have one I8000 which is really loud and fans are constantly on.
There are some tweaks in their forum about how to reduce the start frequency
of fans. You may find such tips (and utility from users - not from Dell)
from Power Control sections of the forum.
However, I did not do any tweaks or change BIOS settings, as although this
might be annoying, but the purpose is the get out of heat from within the
notebook. And it could eventually damage the system from overheat, if I did
not do the tweaks correctly.
I noticed that this symptom seems also associate with user's environment.
For example, I found the system has much less frequency of starting the fan
when working on a "metal" office desk with a cooler environment (such as at
my office) than at a wooden desk with a normal temperature (such as my study
room at home). I also found that more powerful notebooks (i.e. Inspiron for
desktop replacement) may have generated more heat than a slim/ultra-slim
models. But these are just my own user's experience without any formal
scientific researches,
Again, I am not sure if that's your problem as "noise" can be in many forms
and it could also indicate fans are having problems. But as mentioned, once
the fan is started, it is noisy.
Just for your reference and hope this helps.