LTT/Reddit were right: I took one of the fans out of my wife’s new Thermalright Peerless Assassin cooler & yep, that’s the solution to the whiny noise problem. It’s still running at between 55-60C under load with just the one fan. Why do they give you 2 when one works better for noise levels and makes maybe 1C difference? Crazy. It’s not like this is an expensive cooler & they could shave some cost off *and* avoid customer dissatisfaction with noise when they assume you’re supposed to use both