What are you hoping to do with the box?

Seems perfect for a HTPC.

Is it in a small form factor box as well (not a larger PC case)?

Could well limit your choice of upgrades, as could the PSU (power supply unit)

This, should have elaborated on what I meant by provisions: at least 2x pcie slots, probably an 800w + power supply and a case big enough to fit it all in. Honestly that CPU is not ideal for gaming anyway. Like Rab said though its a good htpc setup as is. Won't make a good gaming rig. I use only AMD coz value for money I can't go past it and I've always had very capable gaming rigs that cost considerably less than an Intel/nvidia setup. Intel setups will bench mark higher apples for apples but the real world difference is negligible, intact amd is actually ahead in certain areas/tasks

Edited 22/07/15 03:16 AM22/07/15 03:16 AM by barnz

It's in a medium sized case. Silverstone about the same size as a top line home theatre reciever. PS is a Cooler Master V850 (RS-850-AFBA-G1).

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the GTX750 but it doesn't like the setup... ie: Can't enter bios with the gfx card inserted, doesn't matter if I disable the port even it simply will not enter the boss with the card in the fcking Motherboard... Not sure if it's because the bios is the new point click flashy setup now over the old dos system but it just won't play nice? The APU's R7 has the ability to xfire or whatever it's SLI version is with only one gfx card but I don't know if it will be better than the GTX750 or not I just think the compatibility is better and wonder why the original owner went the route he did with that specific MB and APU?

As for what I'm using for? Going off the specs I think it'll be my HTPC, gaming console and music if I can get the right setup as it sounds nowhere near as good as my Arcam player!

Coz AMD's apu's are an excellent all in one package. He probably wanted to game on it and realised a crossfire low spec setup wasn't going to be better than a decent single. A big single might be the go but honestly that CPU is probably already somewhat of a bottle neck. I also use SSD hard drives for main applications and games. Large Mechanical drives for storage. SSD's are excellent value for money upgrades IMO. They make a noticeable difference.

Yes, I'm about to get two 500gb Samsung 850's for my laptop and this HTPC. The generic 1tb wd I pulled from an external caddy to use making sure all the parts are working takes fricking minutes just to start win 8.1 with like two programs on it! The wife's ultrabook is my main device atm and I leave it on 24/7 seeding Torrentday and downloading everything and that SSD has been going strong for 3yrs now and still boots amazingly fast even with all my dloading tv shows, movies and the 100 programs it has installed... Lol. Tbh I had expected it to pack it in by now with the amount of read/write is done in its time! And it's only a Toshiba...

Could you just be missing the BIOS screen because the video signal/screen isn't getting activated until after that part of the process?

Try hitting the pause/F1/F2/del key (whichever your MB uses to get into bios) as soon as you turn the machine on - see if it enters it that way before the screen even turns on?

Also check if there's any driver updates or BIOS updates for the board - there's often fixes for issues like these (make sure GPU drivers are up to date too from the Nvidia website)

If you do decide to crossfire it the graphics will lower themselves to the speed/memory of the slowest of the 2 - in your case the onboard APU and the internal RAM (DDR3, not DDR5 like the discrete GPU would be) - Usually better off running any new card solo, rather than crossfiring it with the slower internal one.

You'd probably have to look for a low profile GPU too - maybe the reason the original owner chose the GTX750 - best bang for buck in that size? Maybe even the only choice?

Power should be perfectly fine.

You should also be able to output the sound to your Arcam player digitally - toslink/s/pdif/HDMI - making use of it's DAC and AMP, rather than the one on the motherboard.

BIOS

Drivers

GTX750

(Assuming you're using Windows 8.1 64 bit)

Edited 22/07/15 03:52 AM22/07/15 03:52 AM by Rab

Arcam can only accept USB input to read (whether fat32 or ntfs) the rest are outputs so that's a no go unfortunately. I'll try the bios again but with a heap of tries I have not succeded and that's with mashing the delete button from the get go! lol. I'm not worried with top graphics as it just has to pay them but for movies it has to be top notch like the Arcam bluray player does (bdp-300). It's got nearly nothing inside it yet manages to somehow crush everything else I've seen for image and sound quality and I was a big sceptic also until I bought it second hand of the same bloke...I always said just get a ps3 as it does it all aswell but nothing like the Arcam can!

I can computer good too guys

I can potato :(

Don't be sad Don....that's a great attribute to have!

Took me years before I knew how to count to potato

new wireless mouse