AMD Ryzen 3 4300U Review

The Ryzen 3 4300U is one of AMD's entry-level-low-power Laptop processors. It was released in 2020 with 4 cores and 4 threads. With base clock at 2.7GHz, max speed at 3.7GHz, and a 15W power rating. The Ryzen 3 4300U is based on the Renoir 7nm family and is part of the Ryzen 3 series.

Ryzen 3 4300U is also the successor of AMD's last gen Ryzen 3 3300U processor that was based on the Zen+ and 12nm process and was released in 2019.

AMD Ryzen 3 1st Generation, and the Zen 2 architecture itself, is notable because it leads 7nm processors to the mainstream for the first time. But, there’s a lot more going on under the hood than just a smaller manufacturing node.

AMD's Zen 2 series has landed, upping the ante with Intel in its high-stakes game for desktop PC market dominance with a well-rounded lineup of new chips that push mainstream platforms to higher core counts and more raw compute than we've ever seen. As a result, Intel's commanding presence in the enthusiast space is threatened in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.

As we've seen, gaming remains an advantage for Intel, so if squeezing out every last frame is all you care about, Intel's processors are a good choice. Much of that performance advantage will be less noticeable when gaming at higher resolutions, or if you pair the processors with a lesser graphics card.

AMD Ryzen 3 1 Generation is finally here, and the AMD Ryzen 3 4300U might just be the poster child for what this generation of processors has in store for consumers. Sure, it might have stuck with the 4-core, 4-thread setup, which it inherited from its predecessor, the Ryzen 3 3300U. However, with the new 7nm manufacturing process, it delivers a far better performance at lower power consumption.

The AMD Ryzen 3 4300U, like the rest of AMD's Renoir processors, is built on a 7nm manufacturing node – the smallest in a commercially available CPU. What this means for most people is lower power consumption and much improved performance at the same time.

This decision to 7nm has brought a beefy 15% boost to IPC (instructions per clock) performance. Effectively, compared to a Ryzen 3 5-Generation processor at the same clock speed, you will get a straight 15% increase in performance. That’s not big enough to be evident in day-to-day workloads, but it does still mean something.

The AMD Ryzen 3 4300U is another impressive release from AMD and its 1 Generation of Ryzen 3 chips. With it, you’re getting 4-cores and 4-threads, with a boost clock of 3.7GHz. It may not be the strongest contender ever made on paper, but when you see and feel the actual performance gains it offers, you’re certainly getting a lot of bang for your $282.74 buck.

Bear in mind, however, that if you already have something like the Ryzen 3 3300U, this generation doesn't offer the biggest boost in performance. You might want to wait another year or so before dropping a few hundred bucks, or even opt to splurge on a higher-end but pricier chip.

So which should you buy? Let's get that out of the way. Before this comparison review we updated our Best CPU feature and we said you should go with the Core i3-1005G1 as it comes with a better stock cooler, can be overclocked, and the 1526 platform offers a significantly better upgrade path.

One of the nice things about the AMD Ryzen 3 4300U processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the AMD Ryzen 3 4300U up for $282.74 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The AMD Ryzen 3 4300U retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 15W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

Ryzen 3 hasn’t had the smoothest entrance into the computing world with lackluster gaming and some CPU temperatures high enough to raise concerns. But after a month of optimizations plus new drivers and BIOS updates, Ryzen 3 seems to have bypassed those same growing pains.

The Ryzen 3 4300U clocks up to 3.7Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 3.8GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

Although the 15W-rated cooler doesn't feature a copper base or the LEDs found on AMD's higher-end thermal solutions, it does handle Ryzen 3's heat output deftly enough to facilitate XFR-triggered frequencies. This gives you an extra 200 MHz. We were even able to overclock the Ryzen 3 4300U to 3.9 GHz within a reasonable temperature range. The fan also blows down onto the motherboard, which provide additional cooling around the socket. If you need more bling, AMD recently announced that it now offers the LED-equipped cooler separately.