Great thread! After reading through, there were several notes of the PoE version being loud and muffling techniques - foam, placement, etc. While I am using a Lorex with their 60 day return policy and the noise is a legitimate reason to return. I am very tempted to create a video review that documents it. Spec wise the Lorex is close to the NVR4208. Based on pictures I have seen in this and other threads the internals are virtually identical as the Lorex, NVR4208 and NVR5216 all have the same arrangement - motherboard with heatsink, case fan that pulls across the heatsink, Delta brand powersupply and room for 2 hard drives. It appears that the non-replaceable fan in the power supply in the culprit as I unplug the case fan and there is no drop in sound. Perhaps it is a bad sample but as I ran a sound test for objective measures and the results confirmed and quantified my initial subjective concern - Ambient only - 30.3dB, Ambient + PC - 33.1dB, Ambient + NVR - 45.5dB, and Ambient + PC + NVR 48.5dB. That additional 15dB put out by the NVR is huge and can't think of any other electrical appliance that has cooling requirements (DVD, stereo amp/receiver, etc) that has that level of noise. The PC with 800w ps and a total of 6 fans dwarfs the NVR yet only adds around 3 dB sound!
Is the NVR5216 equally as loud or do I just have a bad model? I have virtually decided on the non-PoE version of the NVR5216 due to that issue as it removes the power supply. The last thing I would want is a thief to break in and have a noisy NVR saying "look in the closet where I am hidden!" While totally silent isn't a requirement, lack of intrusiveness is. Netgear, BT and others offer quite fanless PoE switches with some compromises, like 16 ports to get 8 PoE, but I really like the design of the Dahau PFS3110-8P-96. Don't care if it is fanless as can't tell from the single photo, just non-obtrusive like my PC. Anybody using that in combination with the NVR5216? Impressions? (Edit note - not ready at this time to go BI but a freestanding PoE will set me up nicely if later do.)