Reducing fan noise on an E420R

I've recently purchased an E420R server and have set it up for use as a
server at home. All is well, except that working in the same room as it
gives me a serious headache from the insanely loud fan noise generated
by the fan assembly's 3 120mm fans. In fact, it's so loud that it's
audible from other rooms as well. I've checked the fans themselves and
they are completely clean and seem to be functioning properly, so I can
only assume that this level of noise generated is by design.

Now, I am aware that this kind of server needs a rather steady airflow
and the air that it expels is quite warm. The box heats the room up by
several degrees within a few hours. It would seem that each of the 3
fans is primarily dedicated to 3 seperate functions. The left one pulls
air over the hard drives and pushes it out over the addon cards. The
middle one pushes air over the 4 CPUs. The right one pushes air over
the RAM. The fans themselves are wired to a proprietary power connector
with 3 wires each. There are no molex or standard 3pin connectors.

Considering all of this, here's my current plan: I've ordered a new
E420R fan assembly off eBay which I will remove the stock fans from. I
will then replace the two side fans with low power 120mm case fans that
should hopefully produce around 15dB of noise each. Then, I will
replace the middle fan (the one that cools the CPUs) with a
comparatively powerful one which will probably produce around 30dB of
noise. I'll cut the wires going to the power connector leaving a few
inches to work with. Then I'll cut the connectors off the aftermarket
fans and strip a bit of the insulation off and twist them together with
the corresponding colors on the proprietary connector. Then I'll wrap
the twisted area in electrical tape and hope it works.

Does this seem like a reasonable idea? Is there a better way to connect
the new fans? Is it possible to remove two of the CPUs to reduce the
cooling requirements of this box, and if so, which ones do I pull and
can I leave all 4GB of RAM in with only 2 CPUs?

.