I run ubuntu 12.04 on an i5-2500k, 16gb ddr3-1600 ram and intel ssd .. I currently have 4 windows vms running, 1 for adobe cs4, one for adobe cs6 (both windows 7) and 2 xp vms for ie7/8 ... runs just fine, quite often have an IE6 vm running also.

using awesome wm for a triple head setup, which i guess is a lot lighter than unity or whatever.

I ran the same thing but in reverse before, windows 7 with a couple of linux VMs, for making web stuff to run on linux servers it was painful.

oh, and is it's vaguely relevant i bought the bits for a grand total of £700 excluding screens/keyboard/mouse/optical drive.