Just wanted to say a thank you to alot of the members here, espesically @Dschijn @Tech Inferno Fan and whole host of other posters who have shared their experiences, good and bad. The bad experiences especially were as equally helpful as the more technical people were able to help them and me by proxy :).
I've just got got my akito box with a 970 up and working with both windows and osx and both seem pretty smooth. Took a bit of fiddling on the software side (had win 7 but deleted and installed 8.1 due to problems, from looking at other people 8 seemed a lot more stable).
Basically changed my 2011 mbp from running 11fps on Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0 to 79fps. Pretty smart, just like all the people here who made this a thing!!!
Just need to sort out my box now and get it all enclosed and with a nice switch and suitable cooling, now it's all working!