Looking to setup a lab on a budget

Would like some advice on a lab setup recently completed the stanley cc course and would like to setup a lab for studying can someone point me in the right direction
Currently i have 2 motherboards and about 5 hard drives
Advice would be greatly advised also am about to start studying for Linux +, do i really need for eg the dell poweredge servers i see most people investing, if so i may need to save up a bit more money.
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Currently i have 2 motherboards and about 5 hard drives
Advice would be greatly advised also am about to start studying for Linux +, do i really need for eg the dell poweredge servers i see most people investing, if so i may need to save up a bit more money.
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Comments
The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent. - Arnold Schwarzenegger
However with that being said VMware 5.1 and above work better with hyperthreading so that why I lean towards Dual CPU servers, but a solid i7 with HT will do just as well just don't play a video game while it's running lol!
if you want a starter server, you can buy a Dell 2950 GEN III for $180 starting off ebay; it's a none HT processor but it works.
Check out autolab, it's pretty cool: http://www.labguides.com/autolab/
I have been considering the dell 2950 gen III on ebay i am watching and few and will be making some offers.
The budget i can work with is about 500 dollars
My current setup or components i have
A gigabyte motherboard with an AMD phenom 2 dual core 3.2 ghz with 8gb Ram capable of going to 32 gb of Ram
also another asus motherboard capable of 8gb
I think i should be able to purchase the dell server, some more ram, a case