hiya ive got a 1.3 ghz amd duron it has a fairly big heatsink and a decent fan but when i look in the bios it says that the cpu temp is around 88 degress is this normal for a duron 1300

thanks in advance

88C is way too hot. In fact, anything over 60 needs attention, particularly if the processor is idling.

Have you cleaned the dust out of your heatsink/fan unit?

Do you have a readout of fan RPM?

its all clean and free of dust and the fan speed is 2636 rpm

Can you touch the heatsink on the side? If it's really 88 C that's near the boiling point of water, it should be way too hot to touch. Just try to gingerly get your fingertip as close as you can to the fins. If you can actually set your fingertip on them, even for a split second, then either the temp sensor is wrong or the heatsink is not making good contact with the processor chip.

History might help here. This is an old PC obviously. Did you get it new? If not, how long ago? How long have you been seeing this temperature? Does everything function normally? At 88 C I'd expect to see all kinds of random errors and crashes, followed in short order by total failure.

i put fresh thermal paste on this afternoon and its worked im now down to about 50 degress thanks for your help anyway

Glad you got it sorted