The 970 will suit the rest of the build just fine. We have to consider that fitting a GPU in the elite division will likely require a new motherboard, which means he will need to replace the CPU and RAM and likely the PSU as well, making it a costly affair.
The VRAM issue with the 970 isn't such a huge deal, 3.5 GB should suffice seeing as how a card like that doesn't really have the horsepower to run software that would make use of more RAM anyway.







