[KVFinn]

>I toyed with the idea of building a Hackintosh to replace my 2011 iMac, instead of waiting for the 2013 model

The prices are comparable if buy an iMac in the launch window. But the 2011 iMac is still being sold today. If you were buy a computer now there is a huge difference.

It's also worth considering overclocking given the stagnation in processor advances over the last generations. Getting a 40% clock increase out of a chip is like jumping ahead multiple years now -- it used to be that you could always wait a year and catch up, so why bother overclocking. But an inefficient old i7, originally 350 dollars, at 4.5ghz from 3 years ago is still faster than anything Intel is even selling today at any price.

[eropple]

Have to second this. I've got the Nehalem i7-875k in my Hackintosh/Win7 machine cooking at 3.8GHz (with no real work from me - the motherboard had a "smart overclock" button and it's been completely stable) and I am thrilled with the perf.

The bigger problem is that it only supports 16GB of RAM.