Links to Software to create a home lab

Pre-requisite:  A server with at least 16 GB of RAM

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538  - Server 2012

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973397  - SharePoint Server 2013

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973403  - Project Server 2013

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh225126 -  SQL 2012

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/default - all Evaluation Software

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/dn407368 - previous editions (e.g. windows server 2008 R2, Sharepoint 2010, etc)

http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs  90 day trials of Visual Studio

Here are your  high level steps:

On your server with 16-32 GB of ram and xeon processors, run up either Vmware, or install Windows Server 2012 Datacenter and install the Hyper-V role

Then create a VM and
Install DNS or just wait for active directory to install it on your first DC
Install Active Directory Domain Services,

Create another domain controller and join it into the domain for redundancy
Create some Host (A) records in DNS

Start creating your vm’s for your farm
Install Windows
Install SQL
Install SharePoint