Core 7 240H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core 7 240H is the upper-mid 45-watt H-class chip of the 2024–2026 budget-gaming wave — 29 catalog models carry it. A 10-core, 16-thread design, it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 47 of the 69 games the catalog tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings, and which laptops ship with it.

Where the Core 7 240H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 57.7 places the chip 192nd of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the upper third of a table spanning two decades of silicon. The neighborhood: the Core i5-12600HX (57.9) and Ryzen 3 7330U (57.8) just above, the Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U (57.7) alongside, and the Core i7-8850H (57.6), Xeon E3-1575M v5 (57.5) and Core i5-14450HX (57.5) just below. Level with a 12600HX under the refreshed Core branding — and with workstation-class chips of the late 2010s — is fair value positioning for a mainstream gaming CPU.

What the chip brings

The catalog lists the Core 7 240H as a 10-core, 16-thread design on a 7 nm-class process rated at 45 W: 2.5 GHz base and up to 5.2 GHz boost. Memory and integrated-graphics details were not captured for this chip, so the table above sticks to what the catalog verifiably holds: a PassMark overall score of 24,108 — half again the previous mainstream H-class tier.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 47 of 69 cataloged games — The Last of Us Part 1, Ghost of Tsushima, Black Myth Wukong, Returnal, PUBG, Metro Exodus, Dying Light 2 and Far Cry 5 among them. Twenty more sit at the minimum tier: Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy and Forza Horizon 5 all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Only Starfield and Helldivers 2 ask for more processor. These verdicts are CPU-only — the 240H's laptops ship with dedicated gaming GPUs that decide the actual experience.

Laptops that carry it

The 29-model roster is 2025–2026 budget gaming with a consumer tail. Acer's Nitro V 15, Nitro V 16 AI and Nitro V 16S AI hold the $1,440 line; the 2026 wave — MSI Cyborg 15 Max, Gigabyte A18 Pro, HP HyperX Omen 15 — steps to $1,800; the Alienware 16 Aurora tops the sheet at $2,220; and ASUS's Vivobook S14 and S16 carry the chip into everyday laptops at $765. Roster medians describe the fleet: office comfort at a perfect 100, energy efficiency 87.4, gaming index 68, best-GPU median 66 and a games-at-recommended median of 41 — against portability 38.2.

Bottom line

The Core 7 240H is the sweet spot of the current budget-gaming generation: recommended-CPU clearance for two-thirds of the catalog, a 10-core layout that ages well, and machines from $765 Vivobooks to $1,800 2026 gaming models. The two games it cannot clear at CPU level are the same two that gate almost everything below the flagship tier. Pair it with one of the $1,440 Nitro or TUF machines and the CPU will not be the part that limits play.