Ryzen 5 4500U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The AMD Ryzen 5 4500U is a Renoir chip from the 2020 Ryzen 4000 generation, which put Zen 2 cores and a 7 nm process into ordinary 15 W laptops. The catalog matches it to 7 models, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 15 of the 69 tracked games. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Ryzen 5 4500U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 42.9 places the chip 305th of 672 scored laptop CPUs — the middle of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood tells the story: just above sit the Core i7-4710HQ, Core i7-4700MQ and Core i7-4700HQ, all at 43.3 — 2014's 45 W H-class quad-cores — while the Core i3-8109U (42.7), Core i5-6440HQ (42.5) and Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U (42.3) sit just below. A 15 W chip running within half a point of six-year-older 45 W quad-cores is the efficiency argument in one line.

What the chip brings

Renoir-U is a 6-core, 6-thread Zen 2 design on a 7 nm process, rated at 15 W: a 2.3 GHz base clock and up to 4.0 GHz boost — six real cores without multithreading. The integrated Radeon RX Vega 6 covers graphics duty in the machines without a discrete chip. In public benchmarks the chip posts a PassMark overall score of 10,651. Memory support and cache details were not captured for this chip, so the table above sticks to what the catalog verifiably holds.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip meets the recommended CPU tier for 15 of 69 cataloged games — God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Hitman 3, The Division 2, Days Gone, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Civilization 6 among them. Another 36 clear the minimum tier, including Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Alan Wake 2. Eighteen games ask for more processor: Starfield, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Fortnite and Counter-Strike 2 sit below the minimum. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and most machines here rely on the Vega 6.

Laptops that carry it

The roster is 2020 to 2021 vintage. The ASUS ZenBook 14 UM425 at $739 tops the used-market prices, then come the IdeaPad Flex 5 14ARE05 convertible at $403, HP 17 at $399, Inspiron 15 5505 at $339, ThinkPad E15 Gen 2 at $319 and ThinkPad L14 Gen 1 at $264. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort at 95 and energy efficiency at 82.6 are the standouts; a gaming index of 59 and mobility at 59 mark comfortable all-rounders, not gaming machines.

Bottom line

The Ryzen 5 4500U is one of the smarter used-budget buys: six modern cores, genuinely good efficiency and office comfort, in secondhand machines mostly listed between $264 and $739. It meets the recommended CPU tier for 15 cataloged games — respectable coverage for a 15 W part. Gaming value still depends on each laptop's GPU and RAM — mostly the Vega 6 here — so check the whole machine, not the badge. For study, office work and occasional older games, it remains an easy recommendation.