Spent a morning with Dell support on the line but we couldn't get the fans to quiet down. Was sent an exchange. Same story. Ended up returning the server. Despite what Dell says these are surely not for an office-level noise environment.
The fans don't go below 48% of max PWM on a brand new R450 with the CPU steady at 3%. The server has a lightweight config: 1 CPU, 2 x 8 GB RAM, Windows Server 2022 doing nothing for now. Only 3 disk bays are populated with 10K HDDs. 5 fans. All Dell parts, nothing third party. Ambient temp is 73F (23C). I cracked a window open and left the room temperature slowly drop to 65F (18C), but the fans only went down to 37%. Still way too fast for the server just sitting doing nothing. I have the Thermal Profile Optimization set to Minimum Power, Fan Speed Offset is Off and Min. Fan Speed in PWM is at the lowest it lets me set it: 46%. Any other cooling settings cause the fans to go even faster. All firmware is up to date (BIOS, iDRAC, etc). I downgraded iDRAC from the latest 6.10.00 to 6.00.30 but it behaved the same. Any advice appreciated as the noise level is prohibitive for the office. (I have other servers with significant more load in the same rack and the fans barely spin loudly enough to bother).
New R450 - Fans Too Fast