Update: my 2nd MSI GTX 970 Gaming, that I just installed tonight, is completely different, in a good way.
For those of you not reading the whole thread, my first one was bad, with audible and annoying coil whine even just using GPU-accelerated Firefox or Chome. It was insanity-inducing, and just the sort of reason the whine is a big deal.
So far, with v-sync on, a couple parts of 3DMark, any in-game (IE, not menu) of the The Witcher 2, and Borderlands 2 after the fan goes back to off, it makes some buzzing, but not too loud. So it might be OK, once closed up and moved to its normal position. V-sync off makes noises that would be good for torturing somebody, in most everything I've tried (I haven't changed any game settings, yet, so they were at what was playable on a GTX 460), but I :wub::wub::wub: v-sync.
To test, I had my case open, and my head about 1ft away from the side of the case. No fans not on the video card itself exceeded 500 RPM this whole time, so there wasn't much to mask any noise it might be making. I will need to test some more, in the coming days, to be sure, but I think this one will be acceptable.
Day 2 update: with the case closed, and back to its normal spot, that circumstantial buzzing is extremely faint, rather than prominent, to the point that I hear my tinnitus and heartbeat when straining to see if it's still there, and what little higher pitched whine was occasionally present is completely inaudible. The fan noise character is less than ideal, but even when the GPU is allowed to get to 95C (highest it's gotten, because I was being mean to it with my case fan settings, to try to get it to go loud), the fans didn't need to go to but 60%, and were just above a, "whisper quiet," level. You'd have to be crazy, like myself, to even consider changing the cooling to something quieter (which I won't do until the fans get old enough to have bearing noise, just the last X video cards I've had...).