GeForce RTX 5000: After Enabling Hotspot Monitoring, Reports of Anomalies Flood In
The main hardware monitoring software has recently introduced support for reading the hotspot temperature of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, a metric that was not accessible until recently despite being present in previous generations. Tools like HWMonitor, HWiNFO, and AIDA64 now allow users to view this parameter thanks to the work done by monitoring software developers, who made a reading available that was not included in NVIDIA's official NVAPI interface.
As was to be expected, reports of abnormal hotspot temperatures have started to flood the internet. Many users have shared their experiences on Reddit – and beyond – regarding a problem that appears to be rather common, especially for the high-end models. The introduction of this data has prompted numerous users to repeat benchmarks and thermal tests of their graphics cards. In some cases, results have emerged that have caught the community's attention, with very marked differences between the GPU temperature and that of the hotspot.
One of the most discussed examples involves a COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 5080 Vulcan, which during testing recorded a hotspot temperature of 98.5°C, while the overall temperature of the GPU was only 68.6°C. The difference of about 30°C led the owner of the card to contact the manufacturer's technical support directly. A user of Colorful's 5080 Vulcan white discovered nearly 100°C hotspot temperature with HWMonitor, then asked for help from Colorful. Colorful responded that an RMA would be acceptable.
Another user found that the 5090D ADOC reaches 112°C hotspot temperature (approximately 35°C delta) at 3000 RPM. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why pic.twitter.com/TvStIHGjTe — UNIKO's Hardware 🌏 (@unikoshardware), July 15, 2026.
Colorful's response was detailed. The company explained that hotspot temperatures above 90°C maintained for over 10 minutes of gaming do not represent normal behavior and may indicate an issue with the cooling system. Before requesting support, the manufacturer suggests checking that the case airflow is adequate and that dust accumulation does not compromise the efficiency of the cooler.
A second case involves a COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 5090D, on which a hotspot temperature of 106.3°C was recorded, again over 30°C higher than the general GPU temperature. The data collected so far does not indicate the presence of a widespread issue affecting the entire GeForce RTX 50 Series family. Many users, in fact, have published values well within normal limits. However, the availability of hotspot temperature readings has provided an additional tool to identify anomalies that were previously, evidently, undetectable, and it seems that such cases are more common than one might expect.
The issue was raised a few weeks ago by Paulo Gomes, following the receipt of a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 that suffered from overheating problems, which however went unnoticed by any monitoring software. During the disassembly of the card, Gomes noticed that the thermal paste had spread around the perimeter of the chip but had left the central area exposed. This generated a distorted reading of the metrics, as the average temperature fell within safety margins.
Currently, NVIDIA has not commented on the situation, and hotspot monitoring remains excluded from the company's official NVAPIs. The hope is that support for the parameter will be reintroduced directly into NVIDIA's suite, not only to have an additional element for identifying potential cooling problems but also to achieve a more accurate measurement, given that the data obtainable from users is provided by third-party software and may not always be reliable.