Starting with the GeForce RTX 50 «Blackwell» line, NVIDIA ceased monitoring the GPU’s hot spot temperature. TechPowerUp and the developers of GPU‑Z report that NVIDIA omitted this particular sensor in its latest graphics cards, resulting in false data in popular utilities such as HWMonitor, HWiNFO, MSI Afterburner and GPU‑Z.
The Brazilian modder Paulo Gomes succeeded in restoring NVIDIA Hotspot monitoring on his latest RTX 50 graphics adapters through custom modifications. The author claims these tweaks revive the ability to read the hotspot temperature, a requirement that emerged because repair centers began receiving multiple RTX 50 cards, and users observed unexpected performance drops in games and unusually high fan velocities, even though the average temperatures remained beneath throttling limits.
When checked with the Hotspot sensor, the average temperature read about 70‑80 °C, yet the Hotspot value hovered around 107 °C, leading to performance degradation and signalling that the GPU had hit a critical overheating point when the safety threshold activated. This safety lock fired repeatedly, as the chip would instantly revert to the 107 °C level whenever it lowered its performance, a consequence of inadequate cooler attachment.
This indicates that NVIDIA did not eliminate the hotspot temperature sensor on its newer GPUs; it remains present and is a valuable gauge for spotting a defective cooler and poor thermal‑paste application. When users lack hotspot data they rely solely on average readings—significantly lower than the hotspot reading—thinking everything is fine, whereas the hotspot can actually climb to hazardous levels, resulting in performance penalties and possible hardware harm.
Paulo Gomes contends that in their service workshop multiple NVIDIA graphics cards exhibited the same set of signs, all related to sub‑optimal cooler bonding or flawed thermal‑paste distribution. These problems are most effectively identified using the hotspot sensor, and since NVIDIA does not offer native support for it without manual tweaks, this situation indeed marks a regression relative to previous company offerings.