TrashBench modded an RTX 5050 with a 5060 cooler and BIOS flash, hitting 16% higher performance, lower temps, and record 3DMark scores—7,000 in Port Royal.
© A. Krivonosov
User TrashBench showed that upgrading a graphics card doesn’t always mean spending money — sometimes a drill, a BIOS flash, and a bit of nerve are enough. He disassembled a GeForce RTX 5050, removed its small stock heatsink, and mounted a cooler from an RTX 5060, hand-tuning the brackets and reinforcing the setup with GAMDIAS fans. Then, using NVFLASH, he flashed a new BIOS to raise the power and clock limits — a bold, if unorthodox, route.
After the overhaul, the GPU frequency climbed to about 3.3 GHz, roughly half a gigahertz above stock. Power consumption rose from 120 to 140 W, yet the stronger cooling pushed full-load temperatures down from 70 to 40 degrees. The payoff was a 16% performance gain, nearly cutting the gap to the RTX 5060 in half.
In 3DMark, the card scored 11,715 points in Time Spy and 2,703 in Steel Nomad, and in Port Royal it became the first RTX 5050 to clear the 7,000-point mark — effectively a new world record. Experts noted that for most users it’s still easier and safer to add about $50 and buy a GeForce RTX 5060, yet this experiment makes a clear case for how far engineering ingenuity can go.