That's a misrep in the specs, actually. With two cards, the BR runs both slots at 16x, but as soon as you stick a third card in, it start splitting the lanes into pairs of 8x.
Looks like you guys had some of bad luck with this board! And to think, when my own BR arrived intact and worked great out of the box, I took it for granted. :D And yeah, I lost some blood when the waterblock emblem lifted up and stabbed me.
Seriously, while I can't argue with most of the...
At a guess, they probably will, because the fans you linked to are 38mm 2600rpm fans. Now as for the noise factor... definitely much louder than the medium Yates. Personally, if I already had an XSPC 360, I wouldn't see any reason to be replacing it with an MCR320