Amd athlon x2(tm) 240 overheating

That is actually rather hot, the max safe temp reported by AMD is either 62C or 71C(It varies between processors). You probably mounted the heatsink poorly, or did a poor job applying thermal paste.

turn that off! way too hot for that processor! reinstall the heatrsink and thermalcompund, and if that doesnt solve the problem get a better heatsink!

there is a utility which was shipped along with mobo drivers called pc probe...it's showing the temp as 60 deg while a third party software named "EVEREST HOME EDITION" is showing me as 35 deg. i dont know which one to believe. if the processor is operating at 65 deg the cabinet should become hot as well but that isn't the case. so is EVEREST HOME EDITION reliable?

even the bios is showing the temp of 60 deg. i replaced the heat sink with an old one and the temp is still the same.

everest report :


Temperatures:
Motherboard 43 °C (109 °F)
CPU 35 °C (95 °F)
Aux 56 °C (133 °F)
GPU 52 °C (126 °F)
HDT722525DLA380 43 °C (109 °F)

believe everest, you can also try hwmonitor, but an x2 240 especially C3 stepping is quite hard to get that hot