CPU overheating leading to switch off?

[wing]

my new computer began randomly switching off. First i thought it was because of a virus so i tried scanning using NOD32 but it switched off during the scan. I then tried to reformat but again it switched off during reformatting.

I checked the temperature of the CPU and it was 71C before switching off. Im not sure why its so high? Is there anything i can do to prevent this from happening without buying a new fan?

My specs are
AMD Athlon64 3000 Socket939
1GB Corsair RAM
300GB Maxtor Serial-ATA Hard Drive

 

[DonNagual]

Is that 71c your idle temps??!

Assuming the fan on your heatsink is spinning, you can try re-seating the heatsink with some good thermal paste (arctic silver). Hopefully that will fix you up.

How long have you had this computer now? Did this temp problem (rebooting) start just recently?

 

[wing]

yeah the fan is spinning
the computer is about 1 month old now and i think its the idle temp
i checked the temp using BIOS health check after it switched off