The video game industry is no stranger to bizarre marketing tactics, but Blizzard’s promotional campaign for the second season of Diablo 4 remains one of its most macabre ventures. To celebrate the vampire-themed “Season of Blood,” the developer commissioned a custom-built PC cooled by actual human blood. Against all biological and technical odds, this grim piece of engineering is still thriving two years later.
The recipient of the “Blood PC,” a Twitch streamer known as Storms888, recently provided an update on the machine’s health, describing its current state as “virtually perfect.”
“I haven’t noticed any dip in performance since the day it arrived,” he shared in a recent interview with Aftermath. “It handles streaming and recording effortlessly. I’ve been playing Battlefield on ultra settings and easily maintaining over 200 frames per second.”
This unorthodox hardware first captured public attention in 2023 when Blizzard launched a blood drive to unlock the giveaway. Storms888 has refrained from making any hardware upgrades, viewing the machine as a unique heirloom he hopes to eventually pass down to his children.
“I haven’t changed a thing,” he explained. “The custom design is a huge factor in that. I want to preserve the novelty of the build for my future kids. Beyond that, there are technical hurdles; both the CPU and GPU are fitted with custom water blocks, and I’m not comfortable tinkering with a loop this specialized.”
The logistics of using blood as a coolant—a fluid prone to coagulation—led to many questions regarding the PC’s long-term viability. While the exact donor remains anonymous, Storms888 suspects the “blood” is actually a hybrid mixture. He noted that while he received a donor slip confirming the sample’s authenticity, the coolant appears to be a standard synthetic fluid infused with red blood cells, resulting in a deep crimson hue.
“Blizzard never gave instructions on replacing the fluid, though they did provide a spare vial of the blood mixture,” the streamer remarked. “Unfortunately, that extra bottle leaked quite a bit and had to be isolated. The coolant inside the machine seems to be mostly standard liquid with biological additives, though the exact ratio is a mystery.”
Despite the potential for biological complications, Storms888 intends to keep the rig in service for as long as the hardware remains relevant.
“I’ll keep it running until the RTX 4090 and Intel 14900k are no longer capable of handling modern titles,” he said. “I’m still stunned that I won. For most of my life, I worked with subpar hardware. This has been a genuinely transformative experience that has paved the way for my professional streaming career.”
Source: Polygon
