If building for home maybe think about buying used equipment to save money. Obviously first check the Compatibility List on VMWare site to make sure you get something that's compatible, but I bought a couple older Dell 2950's with dual quad Xeon's and 16gb w/500gb drives (2 of) for around $300 each that work great on v4.1 and plan to upgrade to v5.1 at home.
Regards, CSSMP