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Does it matter what GTX 970 I buy (if on a tight budget) ?

Yes, it does. Different models have different cooling/power solution. Better solution means better in overclock, less noise, better performance, cheaper one won't overclock and can be very noisy.
 
Overclocking adds very little to the sum total. Get the cheapest full length 970 you can. Chance are that it will have more than decent cooling and with that you're set for the next couple of years.
 
Thanks for that story. That was very interesting. I guess I will watch out for MSI pulling any more tricks out of a hat, but for now I will continue to go with them. I have no knowledge on their motherboards but from what I have seen their GPUs have been of military-grade components and high quality. (Guess I'm a bit of an MSI fan. 😛 )
 


I would go for MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 if you are on a really tight budget its just my opinion.