"freeze the os"? Can you be more specific? What packages were you trying to build on what version of OS X on what machine?
In my experience, MacPorts builds generally work correctly on almost any supported configuration, in my case ranging from a 256MB Pismo G3 (year 2000) running 10.4 up though a recent dual-core Intel iMac on 10.5. You have to be patient, though: it may take a long time especially if there are a lot of dependent packages, which is one of the drawbacks of using a package manager like MacPorts or Fink. The upside is that you generally have a much-more controlled and, one hopes, tested environment than if you installed individually packages from source yourself. And, if you haven't already, make sure you update to the latest MacPorts: 1.8.0 was just released and has some important improvements, including better support of universal builds.