Can an iMac 5,1 run OS X Mavericks? please

Question

I have an iMac 5, 1 running Snow Leopard, I cannot remember what year it was made/purchased, question is will this iMac run OS X Mavericks? Any help greatly appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

No.
You can upgrade to OS X 10.7 Lion.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion
Be aware that your iMac can have 4 GB of RAM installed, but it will only access a little over 3 GB of that RAM ( between 3.2-3.4GBs)
The advantage of installing the 4 GBs of RAM over just installing the 3 GBs of RAM is your Mac will see a little more than just 3 GBs of RAM (every bit of extra RAM helps with newer versions of OS X) and OS X runs smoother when RAM is installled in matched sized pairs of RAM.
Correct, compatible and reliable Mac RAM can be purchased from online Mac RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (macsales.com).
Newer versions of OS X really need, at least, a minimum working RAM of 4 GBs.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac/Intel_Core_2_Duo_2006
So, your iMac will run a little slower on OS X 10.7 Lion. (If your iMac was capable of running OS X 10.9 Mavericks, it would run even slower with no way to get any real additional, significant RAM into your system).
If you decide to upgrade your OS X version to OS X 10.7 Lion,
Before embarking on a major OS upgrade, it would be wise, advisable and very prudent if you backup your current system to an external connected and Mac formatted Flash drive OR externally connected USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire 800, Mac formatted hard drive. Then, use either OS X Time Machine app to backup your entire system to the external drive OR purchase, install and use a data cloning app, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to make an exact and bootable copy (clone) of your entire Mac's internal hard drive. This step is really needed in case something goes wrong with the install of the new OS or you simply do not like the new OS, you have a very easy way/procedure to return your Mac to its former working state.
Then, determine if your Mac meets ALL minimum system install requirements.
To install OS X Lion, you need one of these Macs:
OS X Lion system requirements
An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended)
7 GB of available disk space
2 GB of RAM (I strongly advise install of 4 GBs of RAM)
Next,
If you run any older Mac software from the earlier PowerPC Macs, then none of this software will work with the newer OS X versions (10.7 and onward). OS X Snow Leopard had a magical and invisible PowerPC emulation application, called Rosetta, that worked seamlessly in the background that still allowed older PowerPC coded software to still operate in a Intel CPU Mac.
The use of Rosetta ended with OS X Snow Leopard as the Rosetta application was licensed to Apple, from a software company called Transitive, which got bought out, I believe, by IBM and Appe  could no longer secure their rights to continue to use Rosetta in later versions of OS X.
So, you would need to check to see if you have software on your Mac that maybe older than, say, 2006 or older.
Also, check for app compatibilty  here.
http://roaringapps.com
If you have any commercial antivirus installed and/or hard drive cleaning apps installed on your Mac, like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, TuneUoMyMac, MacCleanse, etc. now would be a good time to completely uninstall this apps by doing a Google search to learn how to properly uninstall these types of apps.
These types of apps will only cause your Mac issues later after the install of the new OS X version and you will have to completely uninstall these types of apps later.
Once you have determined all of this, you should be ready to purchase a download code from the link I provided to be able to download and install OS X Lion from the Mac App Store.
You can then begin the download and installation process of installing OS X 10.7 Lion.
Good Luck!