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I have a 2014 Macbook Air. I dropped it and now it occasionally makes a grinding sound from the left rear of the machine: it sounds like something physically grinding against something else. Oddly, if I squeeze the case when it is making the grinding sound, the sound stops. There's no apparent correlation between when the sound starts and what activities I'm performing. Looking at a teardown of the 2014 MBA, it looks like the fan might be located there, but I can't tell if anything else is in that area.

How would I go about diagnosing the cause of the sound?

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  • If it's relevant, here is a recording of the sound it makes.
    – D.W.
    Commented Oct 17, 2015 at 7:24

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In most cases your Mac will cool itself down by passive airflow, but when things get too hot, the fan will spin up to get the excessive heat out.

Chances are that the drop caused a minor bend in the casing. While you might not see any damage with the naked eye,the MBA is engineered at micron level and there's little room for any "unnatural" dimension changes.

However you might be (arguably) lucky, and the drop might have damaged the fan closure or fan blades. The fan is fairly easily replacable at Apple Service, the casing will be less replacable (or too expensive to do so).

I think it's time to get your Apple Care plan executed, or to give your insurance agent a call.

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