I've been a computer geek since the late '90's. Basically since PC's became mainstream and the Internet was born, that's when I started my journey. I built my first Linux box in 1998 and I've built many PC's since. I got my degree in computer science and worked for some of the Silicon Valley giants doing network management, before leaving it all behind for another career in healthcare medical imaging.
Over the years, I've accumulated LOTS of computer parts- whole PC's, cases, motherboards, RAM, graphics cards, hard drives, peripherals, boxes of cables, etc. So if I get an itch and want to build something or change something, I have a deep bin of parts to choose from.
At the time that I started building PC's, I started playing PC games. Unreal had just come out. I read all the reviews and heard all the rant. I had to have it! It did not disappoint. Then I played the Diablo series. I've been a Diablo (and Blizzard) fan ever since. So it kind of became a habit of building a new system every time a new benchmark game was coming out. Eventually, life got busy and I was less involved with gaming, but I would still build and play for games I really needed in my life.
Diablo III was released in mid-2012. About a year later was when I built up a fire-breathing rig that was worthy of running that game. The build included a new cooler-breathing Lian Li tower, an Asus P8Z77-V motherboard, a Intel Core i7 chipset, a Radeon HD 7770 PCI-E video card, and 8GB RAM. That was a phenomenal machine for the game! Over the years, I put in another better graphics card in there, pumped up the RAM a bit, and converted to a solid state drive.
In 2021, I did the unthinkable- I switched to Mac! Something that I NEVER thought I would ever do. Diablo IV was around the corner and I knew that I would have to build up the PC, since the requirements were so high. I added up the cost and to buy a new motherboard, chip, graphics card, RAM, etc was going to cost $1500+. At the same time, I was also thinking about getting a new laptop. So many priorities were changing for me at that time. My Samsung smart watch just died in a hot tubbing accident on a recent cruise and I needed a replacement. I was somewhat pissed at Samsung that built a watch that couldn't take 10 seconds being submerged, so I wasn't crazy about giving them more business. I was pretty interested in the Apple watch that had fall detection, in case I was to get in kind of accident. Unfortunately the Apple watch was not compatible with a Samsung Galaxy phone, so that meant that I would need to get a new iPhone, which was just starting to put satellite technology into their builds. Well, heck- if I were to get a new iPhone and Apple watch, it would work best if I had an Apple laptop too. So could I dock a Macbook like a Dell and have it run as my desktop too? Apparently, yes! and could it run games? I went down this expensive rabbit hole and bit the financial bullet. The watch was everything I was hoping it would be. I hate to admit it, but the iPhone is rock-solid! Way more dependable than the Galaxy. And the Macbook is at least 4 times faster than any Intel laptop could be. I does play some games. I was able to install Bioshock on it through Steam and it ran like a dream!
So most of my issues were addressed. Except for that Diablo IV thing. When D4 was finally released, Blizzard elected to not make it Mac friendly. In order to run it on a Mac, I would have to run it on Wine, Parallel (or some kind of translator), or subscribe to an additional streaming service and play it on their servers for a monthly fee.
Okay. Back to the PC drawing board. It was the beginning of 2025. I was about to have my second open-heart surgery and I knew I was going to have some downtime. I thought it would be nice to play that during my recovery time. Could I make my current PC rig run the game on minimum requirements? I installed a new BIOS, ran some GPU programs and was able to overclock the card. I overclocked the chipset too. I bought the game and yes, it could run. But after trying to play it a few times, it was chunky and not very satisfying. That took the wind out of my sails and so the machine sat.
Fast forward to now. I bought that game and it seemed a shame to not be able to play it. What could I do to get it to play in an acceptable manner? I'm sure that throwing more RAM at it would help. and a better graphics card could surely help. If I could do this without breaking the bank, I could live with that. I bought 32GB of RAM and a brand new Radeon RX 580 graphics card on Amazon. After messing around with it for 3 days (and doing a completely fresh install of Windows 10 Pro), I finally gave up on that video card. Whenever I opened a game on Steam, whether it be Bioshock Infinite or Diablo IV, it would shut the computer off. I tried different drivers and different game graphics configurations. Nothing would solve the problem. I returned the Radeon card and half of the RAM (convinced that the memory was not the issue) and bought a refurbished Nvidia card to see if the drivers was the problem.
The renewed Nvidia card was $60 more, but that seems to have fixed the problem. It was a pain in the ass trying to get the newest drivers installed, because Windows wouldn't do it and the Nvidia application wouldn't do the installation. The game kept complaining that it needed a more updated version of the graphics card driver. I did a clean wipe of the old drivers in safe mode and miraculously Windows found a more recent iteration.
I've been torture testing the "renewed" card all day and I have yet to have my PC crash on me yet! I started on Diablo 4, since that's what this fuss is really all about. I bumped up the video config demands in stages until I was at full screen in 3840x2160 and it's still running at 60 frames per second! The game looks fabulous and it's running smoothly! Then I switched back to Bioshock Infinite. Slowly, I increased the graphic demands of the game and again, 60 fps with no crashing! The rendering and colors are simply stunning! Okay, we have a winner. Although this card is 10 years old, it's just what the doctor ordered! and it'll get me there until I need to do a full gutted rebuild. All-in-all, the PC refresh cost me just over $250 to get these games to run the way they should. That, I can live with 👍
Screenshots from Diablo IV
