This community here at HN has taught me that CEOs often do work that us engineers are not aware of. It's possible that your ex CEO was doing work that required such a machine.
Also, the equipment you get shows you how little a company values its engineers and how much it values its management. If they insist on giving you the cheapest bottom of the barrel laptop and monitors they can find, they probably won't pay you competitively as well. A lesson I found the hard way.