Did that for a home server of mine after the CPU fan broke. Kept an eye on the temperature for a while and it works great. Now I only need to get rid of the PSU to make it really silent.
Removing the PSU would quiet things down. The PSU fan though, I had mine break on my computer awhile back and out of laziness and frugality left it for a few months and had no ill effects.
There was a supply shortage of fans during the launch of the LCD model. Valve solved this by shipping two types of fans until supply was restored. If you had one of the alternative fans, then your SD would have a pretty bad whine.
Though, Valve offered original replacement fans via. IFixIt soon after, so you could just buy the better fan and change it. I did.
In addition to what the other reply said, the OLED model has lower power usage for the SoC because it's a newer revision of the same chip, made with a newer process.
I had a LCD, and it was good, but the fan was super annoying and battery life was abysmal, and it even got a little warm. The fan was so loud it would drown out the sound of some games and was very distracting. I debated since launch about an OLED upgrade but didn't think it was worth it till this Christmas when I decided to upgrade.
Wow, this thing is so much better. Almost silent, battery lasts waaaay longer and the screen I never expected to be saw jaw dropping. My only regret is I waited so long to upgrade.