I'm looking to replace my home desktop PC (Ubuntu) with something a bit better. Budget around £4-500.
It mainly runs a couple of virtual machines (VirtualBox) and acts as a media PC with Plex (which means video files get transcoded on the fly, which includes some 3D HD titles). Both of these are areas that the current PC struggles with sometimes (A8-6410 CPU with 12GB RAM and SSD). To be fair it copes with everything now as long as I don't try to do both at once but if I watch a 3D title I have to shut down all the VMs, and any more than a couple of VMs at the same time will push it.
I got a good deal on a 500GB Crucial SSD so that's prompted me into building a new box around it and the forthcoming Ubuntu LTS.
I found some desktops based around an i7 and 16GB which is the direction I'm heading in at the moment but I'm open to suggestion. I assume the graphics capability is of some importance for transcoding, is Intel on-board enough? (I won't be playing games.)
I'm happy to build for myself although for a modest premium would buy pre-built (no need for Windows though!).