Steam is having trouble downloading some games right now.
Steam is having trouble downloading some games right now.
I have 1GB internet on fiberoptic and a pretty good computer (though maybe not perfect). I'm having trouble downloading things to Steam at all. When I start a download, it goes fast—way over 100 MB/s—but after about a minute or two, the speed drops way down. It starts pausing for seconds or even longer again, and my speed slows down a lot. During this pause, my hard drive is constantly hitting 100% full. A big 30GB download could take hours instead of minutes. My computer parts are: an i7-11700K, a GTX 3060 Ti, 36 GBs of RAM, and an NVMe SSD for gaming files but I use an old 2TB HDD just to store stuff like games that aren't on Steam. Any help with this would be awesome! Also, I'm new to computers so I don't know how things work yet. https://imgur.com/a/G7w3qPx
How fast are downloads going for other apps and browsers? Can I download stuff from the internet properly? First of all, try moving your game files to a different hard drive or SSD. See if this helps. If not, maybe there is another problem. Are you using a VPN? Try without one. You can also use speed test sites like Speedtest or DSLReports to check your connection. Sometimes turning off antivirus software or Windows Defender might help, though it's not always the case. I suggest trying these fixes. Clear Steam's download cache. Many apps keep temporary files in a cache folder. If that gets full, it slows things down and stops downloads. Removing it can speed things up again. But be careful: if you downloaded mods before, this step deletes them. Skip it if that is the case. To clear the cache, follow these steps: Start Steam. Click on the Steam menu in the top left corner. Choose Settings from there. Select Downloads in the left box. On the right side, click Clear Download Cache. After finishing, restart the app. Next, make sure Steam isn't blocking your internet speed. Steam can limit its own bandwidth to let other apps use more of the connection. You should turn this off if you want faster downloads. Here is how to remove that limit: Start Steam. Click on the Steam menu in the top left corner. Choose Settings from there. Select Downloads in the left box. Uncheck the box for Limit bandwidth to. Make sure Steam Has Adequate Bandwidth. First, give the Steam app as much internet space as possible. Close other downloads running at the same time. Close browser apps that use a lot of resources. Check you are not streaming anything right now. Shut down any programs using the internet. You can open Task Manager (press CTRL + Shift + Esc) to see which apps are eating up network power. Look in the Network column and close non-essential apps. Also, make sure Efficiency mode isn't on for Steam; that makes it a lower priority process. Another reason downloads slow down is too many open tabs or apps on your PC. Closing these things speeds things up. Turn off download throttling. If you have turned streaming on while downloading, the app slows down to let you stream at best speed. This means slower downloads but better streaming. If your downloads are very slow, this might be the issue. To stop throttling, follow these steps: Start Steam. Click on the Steam menu in the top left corner. Choose Settings from there. Select Downloads in the left box. Uncheck the box for Throttle downloads while streaming. If needed, try disabling Windows metered connection. This lets users limit their own usage of bandwidth. It saves data if you have a cap, but it can slow apps down too. So make sure this is off by following these steps: Right-click on the Windows Start button and choose Settings. Go to Network & internet in the left box. Click Wi-Fi. Select your connection. Turn off the toggle next to Metered connection. Change the Download Server Location. The download speed depends a lot on where you get it from. Steam usually picks the nearest server, but busy servers might not be fast enough. You can see which servers are best using a global traffic map online. Once you pick one, follow these steps to change regions: Start Steam. Click on the Steam menu in the top left corner. Choose Settings from there. Select Downloads in the left box. Pick your preferred region in the Download Region drop-down list.
I checked everything you mentioned and saw no issues. My download speed with most apps has been good. Crystal Disk shows my SSD at 100% health, but my read and write speeds are only around 3000 Mb/s (Megabytes per second). When I download from Steam, my read speed is often in the Kilobytes per second range, and my write speed rarely goes above 100 Mb/s. Even when testing in Safe Mode with internet access, the problem remains the same.
It could be something special about the Steam program itself. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling it? Maybe that will help too. I guess this problem might be with how servers work for downloading, not just on Steam.
8 megabytes equals one MB. Your internet connection shows things in megabytes, and Steam downloads also show megabytes. You pay for about 400 megabytes of data each month. When I download games from Steam, the speed is always slow at around 60 megabytes per second. That means my actual download speed through Steam is only about 480 megabytes per second. If you see a speed of 100 megabytes per second in Steam, that actually means your internet speed is much faster, like 800 megabytes per second, which is close to what most people call "gigabit" speed. What are the sizes of the games you are downloading? I can finish an entire game with a size of 60 to 80 gigabytes in less than half an hour.
Hey did you see the picture from the first post? The OP is really hitting a speed of 48 MB/s but it keeps falling way short because the hard drive isn't finishing its job yet. It's not about whether we are counting individual bits or whole bytes, this is just how storage works right now.
Whatever. No need to downvote my attempt at helping. Everything I said is fact. OP says he's getting up to 100 MB per second. The screenshot shows what he was getting right then. And even if it's just 48 MB/sec, that's still almost 400 mb/sec. I had trouble with my Steam download speeds before. Back a year ago, it never dropped below the upper 50 MB/sec range.