Damaged heatsink? (15 R4)

looks like you would have to have core differential temperatures.

There is thin paste to the right side of the Heatsink. To the left side it is spread in lines rather than a paste. There is a small chance that this is a fluke, but i bet, the CPU makes less contact with the heatsink on the left side of the image. That's why thicker coats exist in that region, rather than a thin paste on the side.

This may need some bending, but should be fixable. Although, keeping bending aside for a second. You should ask for a new computer if its not too old yet. Even better is to fix the current configuration you have, simply because you might have tested other aspects of the machine, and might be confident in those aspects, i.e backlight bleed of the screen, screen quality (4k banding issues were there, you get the point)

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Improper thermal pad heights can cause this effect too. Try to change the thermal pads to thinner ones, cut and slosh them onto the nooks and crannies where the regular dell pads were. Then put some thermal paste on the CPU and tighten the heatsink back on to the board. Wait about 10 minutes and unscrew all things and see where there were deep imprints on the thermal pads. These locations make good contact, and you will need to add a thin layer of thermal pad and see if the parts that didnt get imprinted make contact. But first try this. Cut the imprinted parts off, and again tighten the heatsink on. wait a few and unscrew and look for the imprinted patterns. look for the paste pattern on the heatsink and CPU too. it is mucm more even? as it it got pulled from the middle like ice cream? you win my friend. This means that the imprinted sides need to be of lesser thickness of thermal pad.

getting back to bending, you cannot apply a lot of force to the heastsink when bending it, you WILL cause failure. Best optimized solution would be slight bending by pressure to the heatsink ever so lightly, perpendicularly to the plane of the heatsink, on the left side of the heatsink. which is making less contact. once it moves inwards a little, put some paste on it and test this config out. Its a lot harder than the first suggestion.

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let me know if things need clarification.

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Yes. I would request a new one

It surely has to be warped with that impression in it.

What is broken?

Yeah this is what vapor chamber looks like, they have those pillar structures inside, just go google picture it...