Mods have unlocked NVIDIA’s GPU Hotspot measurement on the RTX 50 series, which can give you a clue why your latest card is running at lower performance
NVIDIA Removed GPU Hotspot Measurement From RTX 50, Focusing On Average Temperatures, But The Latter Masks Your Thermal Throttling Problems
Starting with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” generation, NVIDIA dropped GPU Hotspot measurements. According to reports from TechPowerUpand the creators of the GPU-Z tool, NVIDIA had allegedly removed the Hotspot sensor from its latest GPU, which led to incorrect readings in popular diagnostic and real-time monitoring tools such as HWMonitor, HWiNFO, MSI Afterburner, and GPU-Z
With Blackwell, NVIDIA has removed the “Hot Spot” sensor, you still have access to “GPU Temperature” and “Memory Temperature”. While there was always some drama around Hot Spot, it was useful to diagnose a misaligned cooler or waterblock
Now, NVIDIA primarily focuses on the average GPU temperature, which gives a general idea of what the temperatures of the graphics card might be, but the GPU hotspot was generally good at diagnosing a bad cooler contact or insufficient thermal paste application. The Hotspot sensors were laid out across the GPU, indicating the highest temperature reported across the surface of the GPU silicon
Now, Brazilian modder and Repair channel, Paulo Gomes, has managed to unlock NVIDIA Hotspot measurements on its latest RTX 50 GPUs through mods. The “NVIDIA” mods are said to enable GPU Hotspot monitoring once again, and the reason why it was necessary to do this is that the repair outlet was receiving various RTX 50 graphics cards with users reporting abnormal gaming performance and fans operating at higher speeds, even though the average temperatures were under the throttle limits
On checking through the Hotspot sensor, while the average temperatures were reported around 70-80C, the Hotspot temperatures were hovering around 107C which resulted in performance loss, indicating that the GPU had hit a thermal throttle step where the protection limit kicked in. The GPU initiated the protection limit several times because whenever the chip throttled down, it immediately went back up to hit the 107C limit due to poor cooler contact
Before Replacing Thermal Paste (107C Hotspot Temperature)
The issue was confirmed to be poor thermal contact, and once the TIM (Thermal Interface Material) was changed, the hotspot temperatures went down to 100C, leading to much better performance that should have been there from the start
After Replacing Thermal Paste (100C Hotspot Temperature)
This shows that NVIDIA hasn’t removed the GPU Hotspot sensor from its latest GPUs; it is still there, and is still a useful monitoring stat to diagnose a bad cooler and thermal contact. Without knowing the hotspot temperature, a user might see the average temperatures (which are much lower than the hotspot) and call it a day, while the hotspot might be running at critical levels, leading to inferior performance and even possible damage
Paulo Gomes states that they have diagnosed several NVIDIA graphics cards in their repair lab with similar symptoms, all leading to poor cooler contact or bad thermal paste application. These can only be identified better with the hotspot GPU sensor, and with NVIDIA not offering this support, without mods, it is really a step back from the company’s past offerings
We should also point out that NVIDIA provides its data center GPUs with a robust diagnostic tool set, which monitors utilization, memory bandwidth, interconnect health, and has the ability to detect hotspots and airflow issues. Since the sensor is now known to be on the GPU, it would be great if NVIDIA enabled this feature once again on its RTX 50 GPUs through future software and driver updates
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech’s Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking
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