Use this tool to format the sd card, in the options set the format type to overwrite and format size adjustment to on. This might help especially when you used the sd card for other things before.
Even if it's a grey area, as soon as you upgrade to W10 you should be completely legal. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2898668/windows-10-will-be-a-free-upgrade-for-software-pirates-too.html
Not to mention they wiped their arses on the AW port for pc, glad I bought the game for half the price from a key reseller but it still wasn't worth it.
You'll need space for your pagefile, hiberfil (can be disabled though) and program/appdata (could be moved with symlinking but I'd highly advise against that). I wouldn't go any lower than 120GB, especially now when they are so affordable.
Before the whole NAS fad took off here I imported one from the US, the US being the US and using 110v and me living in Europe where we use 220v sure did give some nice fireworks.
Shouldn't have mattered in the first place though, you could even SLI with 2 different brands if you wanted as long as they use the same chipset series (like the 970 in your case)
Going by that rule he could get a ultrabook with a shit gpu which will be impossible to game with. http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GE70-Apache-Pro-012-17-3-Inch/dp/B00IMTQ5I2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428312803&sr=8-1&keywords=MSI+GE70+Apache+Pro-012 this might be a good option for you OP.