My personal observation is that desktop computers have shifted to larger fans, most commonly 120×120×25mm ones.
Good ones are basically silent at 800 RPM, but still move quite a lot of air. I personally use voltage-controlled fans that run at 1000 - 1200 RPM at 12V, and a controller that uses the built-in tachometer, downvolting the fans to 800-900 RPM; depending a bit on use case (pressure differential needed) and blade geometry.
Equipment tends to use smaller fans, and thus need to do seriously higher RPMs to move enough air. It is much worse than linear dependence, because the hub size is basically constant; the effective fan disk surface area is much smaller. At 60×60mm (2.36"×2.36"), you often need 2000-4000 RPM to get significant airflow, and there just isn't any known tech that can do that with relatively little noise: they all whine. The fans in equipment seem to be chosen based on power rating rather than audible noise generated, since it is not a feature users seem to make a buying decision on; unlike computers.
Laptops are designed to spread the heat out, and only use a tiny fan or two when a relatively high temperature is reached; and then sound like a small turbine engine. They are even worse than any equipment -- but only when the machine is stressed enough to need that additional cooling.
It sounds counterintuitive, but a bigger fan that consumes more energy than a smaller fan, installed in less optimal place (much worse flow patterns), can be much quieter than a smaller fan that seems optimal for a given enclosure, because of the different RPMs needed to move enough air for the cooling required. This is just not something many enclosure designers seem to realize, so we get noisy but intuitively/technically straightforward enclosures.