Core i5-8300H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-8300H is a 2018 Coffee Lake-H quad-core that brought genuine 45 W performance to mid-range gaming laptops and workstations, and 14 matched models in the catalog carry it. As a processor it meets the recommended CPU tier in 35 of the 69 games the site tracks — a solid majority. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs in 2026, what it brings, and which laptops feature it.

Where the Core i5-8300H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 50.9 places it 260th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the upper-middle of the table. The neighborhood spans eras: the Core i5-9300HF (51.2), Ryzen 5 7520U (51.1) and Core i5-8400H (51) just above, and the Xeon E3-1505M v5 (50.8), Core i7-1260P (50.8) and Core Ultra 7 155U (50.5) just below. Scoring level with 12th-gen and Meteor Lake low-power parts is a strong showing for 2018 silicon — the four performance cores have aged better than the dual-core ultrabook chips of surrounding years.

What the chip brings

Coffee Lake-H is a 4-core, 8-thread design on the 14 nm process, rated at 45 W in its H-class configuration: a 2.3 GHz base with Turbo Boost up to 4.0 GHz. Graphics include the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630, though most laptops pairing this chip add discrete graphics for real work. Public benchmarks peg it at a Geekbench single-core score of 1,267 with 3,739 multi-core, and a PassMark overall score of 7,359.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 35 of 69 cataloged games — Far Cry 5, Doom Eternal, Diablo 4, Flight Simulator 2020, Escape from Tarkov, Borderlands 3, Control, God of War and Overwatch among them. Another 27 sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG list it above minimum but below recommended. The truly demanding titles — Starfield, Helldivers 2, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Fortnite — still ask for more processor. These verdicts are CPU-only: actual playability depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and that is where the roster varies widely.

Laptops that carry it

The 14-model roster splits into gaming machines and mobile workstations. Gaming: Acer's Nitro 5 family across 2021–2022 at $590–$737, Dell's XPS 15 9570 at $357 and Inspiron G3 3579 at $482. Work: Precision 3530, 5530 and 7730, the ZBook 15v G5, and ThinkPad X1 Extreme units at $326–$531. Laptops built around it typically show a median office comfort score of 95, photo-design index of 82 and performance index of 53 — capable machines — with a median portability index of just 24.8, confirming these are thick, heavy chassis built to feed a 45 W processor.

Bottom line

The i5-8300H remains a sensible heart for a used gaming or workstation laptop in the $330–$740 range: 35 of 69 games at recommended CPU tier covers most of the catalog's mainstream, and the surrounding chassis pair it with serious cooling and discrete graphics. It will not carry the newest CPU-hungry releases comfortably, and no one buys these machines for battery life. For a buyer weighing price against processor grunt, it is one of the better 2018-era positions on the table.