Core i5-10400H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-10400H is a 2020 Comet Lake-H processor that shows up in 8 catalog laptops — an unusual roster where business machines are the minority and 17-inch workstations dominate. Measured against the catalog's 69 tracked games, its CPU-side score clears the recommended tier for 36 of them. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-10400H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 53.9 places the chip 222nd of 741 scored laptop CPUs — solidly upper-middle of the table, six years into its career. The neighborhood within three ranks mixes eras and brands: the Core i9-11900H (54.1), Core Ultra 5 325 (54.1) and Ryzen 3 PRO 4450U (54) just above, the Core i5-10300H (53.9) alongside, and the Ryzen 5 230 (53.8) and Ryzen 7 5800HS (53.8) just below. Scoring dead even with its Comet Lake sibling i5-10300H is expected, but matching an eight-core Ryzen 7 5800HS on the catalog scale is the interesting part — clock speed and sustained H-class power keep this quad-core relevant.

What the chip brings

Comet Lake-H here means 4 cores and 8 threads on Intel's 14 nm process, running a 2.6 GHz base clock with boosts up to 4.6 GHz inside a 45 W H-class envelope — a proper performance design rather than a thin-and-light part. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics handles display duties, though the laptops around this chip rarely rely on it. Public benchmarks put the tier in numbers: Geekbench single-core 1,396 and multi-core 4,026, plus a PassMark rating of 8,192 — mid-pack figures that still clear the demands of most mainstream software comfortably.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 36 of 69 cataloged games — a list that includes Doom Eternal, Death Stranding, Dying Light 2, Far Cry 5, Diablo 4, F1 24, God of War, Grand Theft Auto V and Overwatch. Another 26 titles sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 all sit above their minimum but below their recommended CPU bar. Only seven games ask for more processor than this — Starfield, Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Warzone and Baldur's Gate 3 among them. These are CPU-only verdicts: whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, so check the specific machine before buying.

Laptops that carry it

All 8 roster entries date from 2020. Two are Dell business laptops — the Latitude 5511 at $422 and the Latitude 5411 at $264 — while the other six are big-screen workstations: Dell's Precision 7750 ($628), 5550 ($541) and 5750 ($1,019), the HP ZBook 17 G7 ($640), and Lenovo's ThinkPad P15 Gen 1 ($566) and P17 Gen 1 ($652). That mix explains the medians: laptops built around it typically show an office comfort score of 95, a performance index of 61.3, a photo/design index of 83, an engineering/CAD index of 50.5 and an energy efficiency index of 68.1 — professional machines first, with a gaming index of just 47 and mobility of 32.

Bottom line

The Core i5-10400H is a workhorse CPU for buyers shopping 2020-era professional hardware at used prices. With recommended-tier clearance on more than half the game catalog and workstation chassis that typically pair it with strong cooling, it remains a sensible heart for a do-everything machine — just verify the discrete GPU on the specific laptop if gaming matters, since these Precision, ZBook and ThinkPad bodies vary widely in graphics configuration. For $264 to $1,019, it delivers honest 2020 performance with no surprises.