diff --git a/iso/builder/config/package-lists/bee-nvidia.list.chroot b/iso/builder/config/package-lists/bee-nvidia.list.chroot
index a3d7c85..0dfe712 100644
--- a/iso/builder/config/package-lists/bee-nvidia.list.chroot
+++ b/iso/builder/config/package-lists/bee-nvidia.list.chroot
@@ -4,9 +4,13 @@
 # dcgmproftester as required in the LiveCD.
 # DCGM 4 is packaged per CUDA major. The image ships NVIDIA driver 580 with
 # CUDA 13 userspace, so install the CUDA 13 build plus proprietary components
-# explicitly.
+# explicitly. datacenter-gpu-manager-4-core must be pinned too, not just the
+# cuda13/proprietary variants that depend on it: without an explicit version,
+# apt's solver picks the newest core in the repo and then reports the
+# versioned deps as unmet instead of resolving to the pinned version.
 nvtop
 nvidia-fabricmanager=%%NVIDIA_FABRICMANAGER_VERSION%%
+datacenter-gpu-manager-4-core=1:%%DCGM_VERSION%%
 datacenter-gpu-manager-4-cuda13=1:%%DCGM_VERSION%%
 datacenter-gpu-manager-4-proprietary=1:%%DCGM_VERSION%%
 datacenter-gpu-manager-4-proprietary-cuda13=1:%%DCGM_VERSION%%