haha I translated that Chinese article and found this, made me lol.
“extrude a large tube of toothpaste”, and the overclocking ability is very strong.
*puts tinfoil hat back on for a moment*.
I have a feeling that Intel may have had to solder this. I don't think they were "being nice" or anything of the sort. I reckon that 8 cores in that package was simply too much for their goop, and that they had to solder it just to keep it from continually throttling, which would have made them lose money.
I will be interested to see if all of the 9000 series are soldered. Or are they all 8 core?