In response to yesterday's post about acoustic noise measurements, Matt Palmer, Rog and Michael Greb have pointed out that a "bel" is the base unit of "decibel", with a decibel being a tenth of a bel. That much should have been obvious to me, but wasn't.
Michael reckons 37dB isn't loud at all, which means that computer should be a good purchase. Excellent news!
Thanks for the responses guys.