You may need a video card (GPU) in a virtual machine for tasks like OpenGL, Direct3D, and CUDA. In that case, we usually use an emulated video card, which is not as good of a performer as a dedicated ...
tl;dr is: scrounge up some hardware, preferably on a recent-ish Intel platform with an igpu (i think 8th gen+ is the sweet shot), and then get a slew of storage. Pick a base operating system (I like ...