Virtual Server

Dual socket AMD Opeteron 6-Core 8435, should provide more than enough horse power while keeping the price low

as the stig said, dual operatons would help you and keep the price low, but if you aren't concerned about price then don't worry about it... however, you are using them for vm's. i would say go with operatons if it was for hosting that you were selling because you can sell more cores. sure intel has hyperthreading but last i checked it doesnt allow you to set up 12 cores in vm's on a 6 core processor... but i havent seen how the xeon's work on it. i would recommend a quad core xeon for your home machine, and dual xeon 6 cores on your vm machine. however i would never recommend you only use 4gb ram on the vm machine. 8-12gb minimum. 4gb for the home server is fine. but if you want to set up vm's, keep in mind that each vm uses its own ram. you lose that horsepower on the server itself while the vm is running. they don't share ram. so therefor, like i said, depending on how many vm's and what they will be running etc, 8-12 gb minimum. if you have any more questions lemme know.