K-series are bad for virtualization - do not support most Virtualization features, but still for occasional testing they are ok and if this will be 80%+fun machine and then 20% education or minor testing then Virtualization will run smooth enough.
As well Hyper threading is not necessarily good for Virtual machines. As Aasti wrote - one core(for example 4 execution units) is divided in two and incoming instructions are measured if they can be executed in one cycle on just two execution units - if so they are, if not, and that half-core is the only "core" assigned to a VM - tough shit - it certainly will not be smoother...
So now disregard all what claptonman said, re-asses your needs and IF there's a lot of SERIOUS Virtualization involved, get as many full cores as possible, with as much general I/O (RAM bandwidth/VM + disk I/O>bandwidth (therefore SSD is preferable) available as possible in your budget and DO NOT get a crippled, gaming only K-series CPU......but hey your dad is not running a corporate infrastructure at home, right? ;-)
So...if it is for education/testing anything will do as Aasti wrote...
Or tell your dad to get an AMD Interlagos 12/16(full)core per socket server and for you a pure gaming machine! ha! ;-)
Good luck!
PS: As an IT-professional for My new rig I'm considering i5-3550S...