Bonne Année et Bonne Santé J,
I'm running well under 10.8.2, though not perfectly well. I have small hardware compatibility "issues" that have me wishing for a new system that everyone else has, so that the problems I run across are easliy identified and eventually solved. I have a spontaneous crash problem that I *Think* comes from my graphics card, or maybe its my ethernet card. It happens so infrequently that it really isn't worth it to troubleshoot, better to look forward to the next platform.
Funny you should ask today, now that Intel just announced that the release of the Haswell 4770K is pushed back to June. With SSDs, our systems are plenty fast enough for now, I hope you agree. Buying Haswell will give a (hopefully) long lifespan.
When the 2012 Mac Mini was announced, I picked up the mid-range 2.3 Quad i7 to use as a server for Movies, Music and Books. Turns out that little thing out GeekBenches my big rig! I doubled the RAM and installed a SSD with a Disk Doubler and (like you) made a 1.1TB Fusion drive. It really is quiet, pulls around 20W, USB 3.0 works...
I hope this message reveals my mixed feelings on whether or not to spend $$$ in the deliberate effort to build a new Hack. It will always be a Hack, every upgrade could be an adventure.... For example, right now I'm backing up my Blu-ray collection with DVDFab, and my system crashes every so often at the beginning of a rip. Is that DVDFab, or my system? According to the DVDFab forums, my Blu-ray drive is dying, but I swapped it and it's still happening. So now what? Since I've only got 30 Blu-rays, I'll soldier through it.
I'm not griping, (ironically, it just crashed, thanks for Auto Restore!) it's a philosophical question. Spend $1,000 on new CPU/Mem/Mobo/GFX, get a Mac, or just keep what I've got?
Love to hear your take on this, and the stability of your own system.