The E3 1275 V2 (it has 4 cores, 8 threads due to HT) will be more than able to handle 4 VMs comfortably given you have enough system memory. I suggest 16gb DDR3 1600 ECC memory. Typical rule of thumb is allocate 2gb of ram per vm, so you'd need 8gb just for 4 VMs, and the rest to run your system.
(32gb bit overkill, but something you may want to consider for adding many more vms in the future).
If you want data integrity, ECC is a must. So the 3930k is kind of out of the picture.
The E5 1660 or the E3 1275 V2 are your best bet. I highly advise you NOT to go with the E5 2630~clock speeds are too slow, and you may end up regretting it like I did. Also keep in mind 2 socket systems do not scale exactly by doubling performance. Best case scanarios typically see about a 75% increase, which can lead you to question if you want to spend so much if you could have easily bough two separate single socket systems cheaper which will double productivity.
@Markfw900
Although that is a great deal, OP seems to indicate need for ECC memory, so only Xeons are feasible. Or I'd be all for it as well, especially at that price.
hello)) thank you for the utterly practical advises))) It woudl take me long to arrive at the Xeon e3-1275 v2 that you suggested)) I am certainly much more inclined to go this route now.....I mitgh start with a single Xeon e3-1275 v2 machine and buy some high end dual XEON later on...also considering this XEON is truly close to I7 3930 in performance - only fewer cores...thanks a lot!) I also wanted to ask - maybe you can let me know the kind of the calculations you are running on this machine non-stop - I wonder if you use EXCEL or Matlab?)