> i pulled the cooler and saw the thermal paste spread was super uneven like the chip is bending in the middle which i guess is common with the lga 1700 ilm. Yeah the factory ILM is basically a torture rack for these chips... honestly kind of wild Intel hasnt fixed it yet. Since youre doing this for a client tho, you gotta be really careful. I would suggest the Thermalright LGA1700-BCF Black Anti-Bending Frame because it sits flush on the motherboard and its harder to mess up the pressure compared to others. Be careful with the Thermal Grizzly Intel 13th/14th Gen Contact Frame because it requires very specific torque. If you over-tighten it, you might lose a memory channel or the system wont post. The Thermalright one is like 12 bucks and is way more forgiving for a production build. Just make sure to go slow and do cross-patterns when tightening... dont go full gorilla strength on it or you'll regret it.

@Reply #2 - good point! tho honestly i'd argue the Gelid one is a bit fiddly for a client build where you're on a tight deadline. i've had better luck with the Cooler Master LGA1700 Anti-Bending Bracket Black lately. it feels a bit more solid and i dont run into those annoying memory channel dropouts as often. since you need this by friday just make sure you dont overthink the brand too much. my quick tip: when you're installing it, do the screws in a cross pattern like you're changing a car tire. just get them finger tight first then give them maybe a quarter turn each. if you go too hard you'll literally crush the pins or mess with the memory controller... it's a game of millimeters but it'll definitely stop that 14900k from thermal throttling immediately. good luck with the seattle client!

I've been using the Gelid Solutions LGA1700 CPU Contact Frame on my recent builds. It's cheap but works wonders. Just dont over-tighten it or youll get weird memory issues, tighten it slowly.