Those plastic push pins just scream cheap.
That's because they are cheap.
I still would just take it to the local landfill for recycling. How can you cheap out so bad with fairly expensive cpu's?
Why would they?
Plastic push pins are perfectly suitable for the weight of that cooler.
It's a very common solution - even appearing in 500g tower coolers (e.g. Scythe Katana).
And it's a very good design overall - making coolers super easy to mount, with minimal risk.
The only sensible alternative would be 4 simple screws connecting the heatsink and motherboard.
It's even cheaper
, but also makes installation more complex and risky.
You usually only see this solution when there's a strict space limit - like when they enter from mobo's bottom side (e.g. Noctua L9i).
It seems short, I cannot see how this could properly cool an i7 or i9.
Pretty normally, just with a lot of noise.
Keep in mind Intel gives the default configuration for how their CPUs boost (called: tau - length and PL2 - power consumption).
That's what these coolers are designed for.
The problem here is of course that DIY motherboard makers can apply different configuration - to make their motherboards stand out. We know they do that for -K SKUs on Z490.
How this looks on non-K SKUs or on other chipsets is still mostly unknown.
Even if 10900 pulls 150W when boosting, this tiny cooler will probably manage for half a minute.
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