If you want a computer to overload with random computations, or you feel you have a serious need of a powerful tool to help you with your school work, go buy it yourself. I think it is immature to want a club to buy such a thing for you just because the club is not yet particularly large.
I would rather see the money go to things that would help us grow. I would like to see a LUG t-shirt that I can afford (Read: less than $6). I would like to see us being able to hand out some CD's when we have publicity events. I would like to be able to provide food once a semester at an interest meeting. I would like to be able to reward people when they do something particularly good for the club.
I choose what to spend my money on. I've spent money on food for the LUG, at both the CCC and some snacks I brought to a meeting. I spend money when I go with the LUG to dinner.
I felt a serious need for a computer to run as a server. I worked. I saved money. I bought one.
There are members of the LUG who want us to spend money on a server, and are much more capable than I am of earning enough money to get a cheap desktop with a nice quad-core processor. If you really want one, work for it.
Just because we are currently small, does not mean that we should be so egocentric so as to think that we can or should spend this money on ourselves for our personal use, and let's face it, when you're talking about "let's set up virtual machines for people..." that's exactly what you want to do.