What cpu are you trying to cool? Agreed, noctua's aren't the best color combo in my opinion either. Other similarly good coolers are the phanteks tc14pe, cryorig r1 ultimate, be quiet dark rock pro 3. I'm using the dr pro 3 and love it. Keeps my i5 4690k cool at 4.6ghz with no trouble. The one and only time I ever heard it at all was during an extreme scenario where I turned all my case fans off and ran ibt on it. The case literally had no cooling except the ventilation holes and the rear exhaust where the cooler vents was partially blocked by the stopped fan.
Under normal conditions with the case fans on low it never ramps up even under p95 (v26.6) or ibt let alone normal use and gaming. I can barely hear it idling with the case fans completely off and my ear up close to the case with the side cover removed. Another perk (to me anyway) the fans are slightly smaller than the nh-d14/d-15. By using a 120mm fan up front and a 135mm fan in the middle it easily fits over moderately sized ram (g.skill ripjaws x) without having to move the fan up on the cooler. The ripjaws aren't extremely low profile, but they're definitely not 'tall' ram either and even so the noctua coolers have to have the fan moved up or resort to low profile ram to fit underneath.