Well it was the fan that was noisy, so I disconnected it - wow so quiet now.
Sadly my 360 now no longer works.
Hah! Just kidding not that ignorant, but seriously it was all the fan. I took the heatsyncs off the CPU and GPU and put some arctic silver on there and it was much quieter.
However, I think I dropped a blob somewhere and we all know what happens when we do that. So basically I can't use any controllers on it, the ring of light no longer works and it doesn't like hard drives.
I have put it back in the box and will use it for spares someday.
Will reinvest in one of the arcade models when they come out here, so I can get a hdmi port and the slightly newer revision.
Kinda glad i didn't buy Halo 3 yet!