Nvidia has released a corrective graphics driver, version 595.71, to address a serious flaw in its short-lived 595.59 update that reportedly caused cooling fans to stop spinning on a broad range of GeForce graphics cards. The recalled driver affected RTX 30-series, 40-series, and 50-series GPUs, raising legitimate concerns about thermal safety for affected users.
The core problem with 595.59 was twofold. One fault caused hardware monitoring applications to fail to display all fans on a graphics card, making it harder for users to verify cooling behaviour and potentially misleading them into thinking a multi-fan card had only one operational fan. The second issue was more direct: fans could simply stop spinning after the driver update, creating an obvious thermal risk if the problem persisted under load.
Users reported that some fans stopped responding entirely, custom fan curves were ignored, or only one fan sensor appeared in monitoring tools such as HWiNFO, GPU-Z, and vendor utilities. Several users linked the issue to MSI Afterburner profiles, while others said it occurred even without third-party fan control software installed. A GPU running at load without adequate airflow risks permanent hardware damage, which made the bug more than a mere inconvenience.
Mere hours after launch, Nvidia was forced to pull the driver from distribution and prevent further downloads. The company advised anyone who had already installed 595.59 and was experiencing fan control problems to roll back to the earlier 591.86 WHQL driver while its engineering team worked on a resolution.
The new 595.71 release preserves the intended benefits of its predecessor, including game optimisations for Resident Evil Requiem, as well as "game ready" support for Marathon with DLSS Super Resolution and Nvidia Reflex. Several title-specific bugs were also addressed: Total War: THREE KINGDOMS received a fix for green artefacts on RTX 50-series hardware, and Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age no longer crashes with a fatal error after a driver update. Quantum Break also appears on the fix list, with Nvidia indicating a resolution for a significant performance drop in Act 4 Part 1.
The 595.71 driver supports GeForce RTX 50, RTX 40, RTX 30, RTX 20, GTX 16, and newer notebook GPUs under the Release 595 branch. It is available for download directly from the Nvidia driver download page.
This incident fits a pattern that has become uncomfortably familiar for Nvidia's driver team. As recently as March 2025, following the launch of the RTX 50-series, drivers for older RTX 30 and 40-series cards were affected by blue-screen crashes and instability issues, forcing the company to recommend users roll back their software. Each recurrence chips away at user confidence, particularly among professionals and enthusiasts who depend on driver stability for workloads that run around the clock.
There is, however, a fair case to be made for Nvidia's handling of the crisis. The company identified the fault quickly, pulled the defective release from distribution promptly, and delivered a corrected version within days. That kind of responsiveness is what responsible software stewardship looks like, even if the underlying quality-control failure should not have happened in the first place. Critics who argue for more rigorous pre-release testing have a point; defenders who credit rapid incident response also have one. Both can be right simultaneously.
For the millions of Australians who game on Nvidia hardware, the practical advice is straightforward: if you are still running 595.59, update to 595.71 immediately. If you held off on installing 595.59 altogether, you can now proceed with 595.71 directly. Users seeking guidance on driver management can consult the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission if they believe a defective software update caused damage to hardware covered under Australian consumer guarantees. The broader question of whether GPU driver quality assurance is keeping pace with increasingly rapid release cycles is one the industry, not just Nvidia, needs to take seriously.