I'm really interested in setting up a home lab to allow me to study for my MS certs. I don't intend on paying more than $500 for a home server but in doing vigorous research on different processors that support virtualization I'm losing hope for something in that price range. Server processors (particularly Xeons) that are a few years old support VTx but not EPT. I need something that supports both VTx/EPT so I can run 64-bit VMs, the minimum required to set up MS labs. The reason for both is that Server 2008 R2 won't run inside a VM without them. I'm kinda stuck because I didn't want to put a significant investment into buying a powerful server for lab use. Even for desktops I can't find anything with 64-bit virtualization capability for under $700.

How should I proceed?