This Cleopatra Gaming PC Costs S$16,999!!!

This PC right behind costs a whopping 17,000 dollars. Let that sink in for a minute…Okay, now to be fair, it may be 17,000 but that’s in Singapore Dollars. Take the current conversion and it would be roughly 13,000 US Dollars thereabouts. So while not quite 17K, 13K is definitely still quite a lot of money. And it’s even got a name. This is the Cleopatra from Kingdom Technologies here in Singapore and it’s part of their top of the line Kings/Queens series of custom desktops. Needless to say, it definitely looks the part. But you might be asking, what do you actually get with your money?

To start off and to set the record, Kingdom joined hands together with Asus and this is one of the many custom PCs that came out from that partnership. Needless to say, you’re going to be hearing quite a lot of Asus parts in this build and as you can already see for yourself, the case is from none other than Asus.

This is the Asus Strix Helios White Edition and it’s full ATX tower enclosure with a really striking and bold design. You get brushed metallic panels for most of the frame, full sized tempered glass side panels on both sides, a full glass front panel with RGB aesthetics and even heavy duty straps on the top which breaks up the look while acting as handles.

What I do definitely appreciate however are the use of magnetic fan filters for both the top and bottom. They slide off really easily without any hassle and because it’s magnetic, they slip back on securely. The side panels also feature a toolless quick release latch design which makes it really easy to remove as well. You’ll also find a good amount of front IO with 4 standard USB 3 ports and a Type-C port. Overall, it’s great full ATX tower design that allows you to fit quite a number of parts while also being relatively easy to maintain should you need to.

Speaking of which, there is quite a bit of radiator and fan support here. You can fit up to a 420mm or 360mm radiator at the front, up to a 360mm or 280mm radiator on top and up to a 140mm radiator at the back.

So now let’s talk about the parts that this PC is rocking, and how it may or may not justify that 17,000 dollar sticker price. For a start, we have the best of the best when it comes to the CPU. We have the latest Intel Core i9-12900K, a 16 cores 24 threads behemoth of a CPU that’s the best Intel has ever come up with by far. This is mated to arguably an overkill motherboard, but hey, if you’ve already got the latest 12th-Gen Core i9, why not go for the best?

So here we have the ROG Maximum Z690 Extreme Glacial. This is an eATX motherboard and the most prominent feature is that it comes integrated with a full motherboard watercooling block from EKWB, a very well known and established company when it comes to custom watercooling parts.

The choice to go with EKWB doesn’t stop there as the GPU is also yet a collaboration between Asus and EKWB. This here is the ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 and not only is it the fastest gaming graphics around the block at the moment, this might just be the most beautiful one as well. Kingdom has also chosen to go with the vertical mount in this Strix Helios case which really does make it stand out further. You also get 32GB of DDR5 RAM running at 5200MHz. These here specifically are Corsair Dominator Platinums. Underneath that motherboard block, you’ll also find triple Seagate 4TB FireCuda 530 NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD with insane read and write speeds, and the whole rig is powered by the ROG Thor 1000W Platinum II ATX Power Supply which you can get a glimpse at via the cutout in the PSU shroud. It even tells you the power draw, which is pretty neat.

As for cooling, you probably already can see for yourself but it’s a full custom hardline loop utilizing mainly Asus and EKWB parts. A single 38mm thick 360mm radiator with triple 120mm fans while the back has a single 120mm. Interestingly enough, Kingdom has decided to orient all the fans within the case as exhaust and has decided not to use intake fans at the front. Instead, you’ll find a full length pump reservoir unit that just looks really beautiful. But while it does make the entire build look amazing, there are some drawbacks which I’ll touch upon later. To top everything off, you get addressable RGB light strips all around which can all be configured via Asus’s Armory Crate software.

But now you probably want to know about the performance, so let’s get straight into it. First up, that Core i9-12900K is really a beast of a CPU unlike any before it. 8 Performance Cores and 8 Efficiency Cores. Through the Cinebench R23 benchmark, the CPU drew a constant 240 watts on average while maintaining 4.9GHz on the all 8 Performance Cores and 3.7GHz on all 8 Efficiency Cores. The results speak for themselves. This is by far the fastest Intel Core i9 CPU yet.

In DaVinci Resolve, this thing just slays. It could render our 10 minute test project out in 4K in just about 5 minutes and if you drop that down to 1080p, it could do it in just about 3 minutes.

As for gaming, we tested on two main resolutions, 1080P and 4K, naturally, at the maximum possible settings. Performance is pretty much downright insane. At 1080P, you can expect upwards of 500 frames per second in games like CS:GO or Valorant, but even triple A titles like Halo Infinite or CyberPunk 2077 will be buttery smooth with frame rates in the triple digits. If you’re a fan of ray-tracing, you’ll be glad to know you can enjoy the nice lighting and shadows without sacrificing much in performance. No less thanks to that RTX 3090 and DLSS 2.0. But perhaps 4K is where this system really shines and it shows. Even with everything maxed out, you’ll still be able to comfortably play well above 60 frames per second in the most demanding of titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. Should you so wish to, you can even game competitively in games like CS:GO or Valorant with little to no issues. Now when it comes to Ray-Tracing, performance definitely takes a hit at 4K even with DLSS 2.0 set to Balanced. But still amazing nonetheless and you can get even more performance just by dropping the settings to High. All in all, it’s a beast of a gaming machine.

Now in terms of temperatures, it’s pretty great especially if you’re just gaming. You can expect temperatures to hover around 80 degrees celsius for the CPU and roughly the mid 60s for the GPU. The fans don’t really spin up too high either.

But here’s where this system falls a little short, and it’s on creative workloads. As mentioned in Cinebench, that Core i9 is able to sustain almost 240 watts on the power draw and maintain 4.9GHz on the Performance Cores and 3.7GHz on the Efficiency Cores. But it does do so at a constant temperature of about 93 degrees celsius, which isn’t that fantastic considering the hardware.

So this leads me into talking about the things that I feel could’ve been improved. The first of which would be the reservoice up front. Now it looks good, don’t get me wrong, but I feel an additional 360mm radiator here would’ve made a huge difference. Currently, there’s a single 38mm thick 360mm radiator up top with just one set of fans in a push configuration. Had this system been equipped with a Core i7 and RTX 3080, perhaps that would’ve been adequate. But with a Core i9 and RTX 3090, it seems to be the bare minimum.

On that note, I’m also a little perplexed that Kingdom decided to go with this fan orientation. Every fan in the system right now, three on the top and one at the back, are exhaust fans. While this might be beneficial in terms of cooling with the current setup, it also means it negates the purpose of the fan filters due to negative air pressure.

Again, had there been a 360mm rad up front, the fans could be oriented as front intake to create a more balanced or positive air pressure, and overall, should reduce system temps quite a fair bit. In addition, the front dust filter would actually be useful, which is neat. The next thing that I feel is a bit of a let down would be the hard pipes themselves. Now they look great, no doubt about that. But only from a distance… If you actually take a look up close, you can see where Kingdom kind of cuts corners. You can clearly tell that some of the pipes aren’t that straight and just feel a little off. Now I understand I might be nitpicking a little, but for 17,000 Singapore Dollars, I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. They could also do better with the sleeved wires and use a cable comb to make them look more aesthetically pleasing.

And now, my last gripe about this system that can be viewed differently depending on your own thoughts. Half the reason why the Cleopatra PC costs 17,000 Singapore Dollars, is purely because of the SSDs. Each 4TB FireCuda 530 SSD costs about 1,400 Singapore Dollars. There’s three in this system, which makes it roughly 4,200 Singapore Dollars. On just SSDs alone. Had Kingdom decided to just go with a single 4TB, it would’ve brought price down without really sacrificing much. After all, I daresay not many of you would use more than 4TB of storage.

But despite all that, I’ve to say that the Cleopatra is one heck of a gaming PC. It’s really got everything you need, be it performance, looks, expandability and much more. If you’re looking to get a custom built PC like this right out of the box, zero fuss, this is it. Of course, you would be paying a slight premium for such a service, but you probably already knew that. Personally, I’m more of a build it myself kind of guy. I like to choose my own parts, tinker around the build, this and that. I like building PCs. But it does take time. So I can definitely appreciate having something like this, just out of the box.

Again, I find some choice of parts to be a little questionable but overall, it’s still a really well put together custom desktop. It’s great and I wish I could keep it.

(At the moment, the Kingdom Technologies website is undergoing a revamp. So do not be alarmed when you're redirected back to the main Challenger site. We do not know when the site will be back up, but something to take note. We'll update the pinned comment once it's up and running again!)