Core i5-7300U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-7300U is a seventh-generation Kaby Lake dual-core from 2017 — the mid-cycle refresh chip that carried the back half of the 2010s corporate laptop cycle. The catalog matches it to 18 models, and it does not meet the recommended CPU requirement in any of the 69 games the site tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-7300U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 23.3 places the chip 432nd of 672 scored laptop CPUs — the lower-middle of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood: the Core i5-4300U (23.6), Core i3-7020U (23.6) and Core i7-7500U (23.4) just above, the Core i5-3350P (23), Core i3-4000M (22.8) and Pentium G4560 (22.6) just below. Finishing a hair behind the i7-branded Core i7-7500U is the honest Kaby Lake picture: within this family, badge steps were worth fractions on this table, not leaps.

What the chip brings

Kaby Lake-U is a 2-core, 4-thread design on a 14 nm process rated at 15 W: a 2.6 GHz base clock and up to 3.5 GHz boost. Memory support runs to 32 GB of DDR4 across two channels at 34 GB/s, with Intel HD Graphics 620 integrated. Geekbench results were not captured for this chip; the public record the catalog verifiably holds is a PassMark overall score of 3,622.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip meets the recommended CPU tier for 0 of 69 cataloged games. The minimum tier is where it lives: Minecraft, League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant, Sims 4, Diablo 4, F1 24, Doom Eternal, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Grand Theft Auto V and Civilization 6 all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Modern blockbusters — Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Overwatch — land below even the minimum bar. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and the integrated HD Graphics 620 is the realistic rendering option in this fleet.

Laptops that carry it

The 18-model roster leans Dell and Lenovo business: Latitude 7390 at $270, 7490 at $232, 5490 at $212 and 5590 at $241, ThinkPad L470 at $189, T570 at $217 and X270 at $184, the EliteBook 850 G5 at $237 and a Toshiba Tecra A40-D-1DH at $266, joined by the EliteBook x360 1030 G2 convertible at $208 and two 2016-dated holdovers, the Latitude 7480 and ThinkPad T470s at $135 and $137. Nearly everything is a 2017 business machine, with a couple of later-dated listings mixed in. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort at 50, a performance index of 32.1, mobility 56.5 and portability 71.9 — light, sturdy daily drivers — while a gaming-index median of 59 reflects lighter titles clearing minimum bars, not modern AAA play.

Bottom line

The Core i5-7300U is a solid buy in the $135 to $270 range for a dependable office portable: quick enough for everyday work, efficient at 15 W, and housed in well-built 2017 business chassis. Gaming ambitions should stay modest — nothing reaches the recommended tier — but for typing, browsing and meetings, machines like the ThinkPad X270 or Latitude 7490 remain exactly the cheap, durable tools this segment promises.