NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs get hotspot temperature readings in new version of HWMonitor to help diagnose cooling-related flaws

Q: Does the article state whether NVIDIA officially re-enabled hotspot sensor access for Blackwell GPUs or if HWMonitor found a workaround?

The article states that it is unclear whether NVIDIA officially re-enabled hotspot sensor access or if CPUID implemented a workaround; the release notes for HWMonitor 1.65 give no explanation.

Q: How can hotspot readings help diagnose cooling or thermal contact issues on RTX 5000 series cards?

Hotspot readings let you compare the GPU average temperature to the localized hotspot to reveal cooling or poor thermal-contact problems. For example, a card might show a normal GPU temp (51C) but a higher hotspot peak (68C), while cooler-related faults can produce much larger deltas, sometimes twice as large or more, which can cause throttling.

NVIDIA blocked access to hotspot readings when the Blackwell range emerged, but now these sensors can be accessed again - although it isn't yet clear why.

Darren Allan

Tech Reporter

Published Jul 14, 2026 1:45 PM CDT

1 minute & 30 seconds read time

TL;DR: The new version of HWMonitor (v1.65) brings in hotspot temperature readings for NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs, letting users diagnose cooling-related issues where the graphics card is underperforming (when the average GPU temp looks normal). It's not clear if Nvidia made this change to allow access to the relevant sensors, or if it was resolved by the developer of HWMonitor.

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The latest version of the popular tool HWMonitor has brought back support for monitoring hotspot temperatures with NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs.

VideoCardz noticed that the release notes from developer CPUID for version 1.65 of HWMonitor detail two new features: preliminary support for the Lisuan 7G100 GPU, as well as: "Hotspot temperature on NVIDIA RTX 50x0 GPUs."

If you recall, NVIDIA put paid to hotspot readings with the launch of Blackwell GPUs, but the sensors still remained - it's just that Team Green removed public access to them, so tools like HWMonitor could no longer pull those readings.

This meant that RTX 5000 graphics cards running at normal average temperatures, yet underperforming possibly due to a high hotspot temp (perhaps due to a poor cooler contact) couldn't have this diagnosed (at least not easily via a simple Windows utility like HWMonitor).

With the functionality now back in HWMonitor, all is well again in terms of being able to troubleshoot potential hotspot issues.

What isn't clear is whether NVIDIA has brought back the ability to tap the hotspot info, or whether CPUID has managed to implement some kind of workaround to get the details with this new version of its utility. No explanation is provided in the release notes for version 1.65.

In the above post on X that VideoCardz flagged, a German overclocker says that they've tried the new functionality in HWMonitor on their RTX 5090 with water-cooling, finding it had a GPU temperature of 51C with a hotspot peak of 68C (after a minute or so of running 3DMark11 looped).

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Question #1

Which HWMonitor version restores hotspot temperature readings for NVIDIA RTX 5000 (RTX 50x0) GPUs?

HWMonitor version 1.65 restores hotspot temperature readings for NVIDIA RTX 50x0 (RTX 5000) GPUs. The developer CPUID's release notes for version 1.65 list "Hotspot temperature on NVIDIA RTX 50x0 GPUs" as a new feature.

Answered

Question #2

Does the article state whether NVIDIA officially re-enabled hotspot sensor access for Blackwell GPUs or if HWMonitor found a workaround?

Question #3

How can hotspot readings help diagnose cooling or thermal contact issues on RTX 5000 series cards?

Question #4

What example temperatures were reported using HWMonitor on an RTX 5090 with water cooling?

A German overclocker reported via HWMonitor on an RTX 5090 with water cooling a GPU temperature of 51C and a hotspot peak of 68C after about a minute of running a looped 3DMark11 test. These readings were noted in the article.

Answered

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That's operating as expected, in other words, although graphics cards with cooler-related problems may exhibit a much larger delta of twice that or maybe more, leading to throttling due to the pronounced hotspot.