Core i5-9300H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-9300H was the volume gaming processor of Intel's 9th-generation Coffee Lake line — a 4-core mobile chip from 2019 that anchored mid-range gaming laptops of its era. The catalog matches it to 10 models, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 35 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 i5-9300H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 51.2 places the chip 256th of 672 scored laptop CPUs — the middle of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood is a generational crossroads: the Core i9-10980HK (51.4) and Ryzen 3 5300U (51.3) just above, the Core i5-13420H (51.2) and its own sibling Core i5-9300HF (51.2) alongside, and the Ryzen 5 7520U (51.1) and Core i5-8400H (51) just below. Holding level with the 2023 Core i5-13420H one rank above is the practical story: a well-aging quad-core that still scores like a modern budget part.

What the chip brings

Coffee Lake-H is a 4-core, 8-thread design on a 14 nm process, rated at 45 W in its H-class configuration: a 2.4 GHz base clock and up to 4.1 GHz boost. The integrated UHD Graphics 630 is display-duty hardware, so every gaming machine in this roster pairs the chip with a discrete GPU. In public benchmarks the chip posts 1,291 single-core and 3,735 multi-core in Geekbench, with a PassMark overall score of 7,411. Memory 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 clears the recommended CPU tier for 35 of 69 cataloged games — Far Cry 5, Diablo 4, Doom Eternal, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Grand Theft Auto V and Civilization 6 among them. Another 27 sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3 and Counter-Strike 2 all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. The demanding end — Starfield, Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Apex Legends and Fortnite — asks for more processor than this. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and that is where the machines carrying this chip vary most.

Laptops that carry it

The 10-model roster is gaming hardware through and through, spanning 2019 to 2022: Dell's G3 3590 at $471 and G7 7590 at $554, HP's OMEN 15 at $658, Lenovo's Legion Y540 at $700 and IdeaPad L340 at $640, plus a run of 17-inch Acer Nitro 5 machines topping out at $737. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: a gaming index of 56 and office comfort at 95, while mobility at 22.5 and portability at 27.4 say these are thick, cooling-first chassis rather than portables.

Bottom line

The Core i5-9300H is now a budget-tier chip, and the honest framing is a cheap entry into older gaming laptops: enough processor for the lighter half of the tracked catalog at recommended CPU settings, paired in this roster with GPUs that were mid-range in their day. It suits a price-first buyer who plays esports and older titles; anyone chasing modern AAA releases at recommended settings should step further up the ranks. Check the GPU and RAM on each listing — at this age, battery condition matters as much as the spec sheet.