While you’ll all be aware that celebrities, despite their wealth, are given expensive shit for free all the time, today we’re going to take a look at one gift in particular. Partly because it’s a gaming PC, but also because we kinda have the receipt for it as well.
Esports guy Jake Lucky tweeted this out earlier today, and it certainly provoked a reaction:
Responses in the replies generally ranged from, “It looks like shit,” to, “That’s massively overpriced,” to, “lmao all that just to gamble,” (more on that soon). That first sentiment might be a bit much. I think this looks great! It’s a gaming PC, what do you expect, and the white lighting in these photos is an infinitely classier look than the electronic clown car aesthetic you often see on these kind of systems. I’m particularly fond of the lighting around the fans, it’s a very “starship corridor” look.
As for the price, well, there are some caveats here. The PC—which was put together by Paradox Customs—was actually bought for Drake as a gift by streamer Xposed. (Paradox tells Kotaku they “hashed out” the component selection together.) In the time between the order first being placed and the PC arriving, the market for a lot of expensive PC parts crashed for some reason. Throw in some Canadian taxes Xposed had to pay and Paradox say the actual cost in July 2022 is somewhere closer to $6,500. Which, you know, is still ridiculously expensive for a PC, but it’s also not $8,000.
How do we know that? Paradox tweeted this earlier today, which handily also gives us a chance to take a look at the kind of specs you can expect to see in a PC that cost more than my last three desktops combined.
As for who paid for the system and why, Xposed actually picked out this exact system for himself, then says he ordered a second for Drake because he had helped the rapper out with an earlier PC, but at the time had to skimp and get him a “prebuilt from Best Buy because it was short notice”:
In December 2021, Xposed signed a partnership deal with Stake, a shady and controversial online gambling and sports betting site which Drake just happens to be continually streaming and promoting at the same time, and who shared this new PCs arrival on their socials.