I told my IT department about the fan issue and they mentioned that many others had experienced the same issue. I got my 6430u swapped out for another 6430u today.
When the fan is on, it still is the same level of noise, maybe a little bit quieter. However, now the fan doesn't run constantly anymore - on my old unit, as soon as the fan kicked in, it never turned off. This one seems to cool itself down to be able to turn the fan off after I've done some processor intensive tasks. So I interpret the misalignment issue affecting the cooling capacity of the laptop vs reducing the volume of the fan.
For my needs, this should suffice. I hopefully should no longer have a blazing fan in a meeting while my laptop is simply idling.