Why are my Steam downloads so slow when I have 50 80 Mbps?
As an avid PC gamer, nothing is more frustrating than sitting down for an epic gaming session only to spend hours staring at Steam‘s dreadful "Downloading…" progress bar instead. But why do Steam downloads trickle on at kilobytes per second when you fork out each month for 50 Mbps or even 80 Mbps high-speed broadband?
The agonizing reality is that a whole host of technical gremlins can bottleneck download speeds on Steam no matter how beastly your internet is. But never fear – with some targeted troubleshooting and the right upgrades, you can vanquish slow Steam downloads for good!
Steam Servers Overwhelmed as Gaming Booms
Steam‘s vast content delivery network pipes terabytes of game data to over 120 million monthly gamers. But as gaming explodes in popularity, even Steam‘s mighty servers can get congested handling this tsunami of traffic.
According to Stream Hatchet‘s Q3 2022 content trends report, gaming live streaming surged another 81% year-on-year. And all these newly-minted gamers are hammering Steam‘s infrastructure with downloads at any given moment.
At peak evening times, Steam‘s severs stagger under the load. And if you‘re all trying to grab the same new hot release (cough…Elden Ring…cough), even 50 Gbps connections start crawling as capacity maxes out region-wide.
Try Less Busy Download Regions
Manually selecting a different regional download server in Steam often yields big speed boosts by shifting your traffic elsewhere. And opting for off-peak hours like 2am also evades the swarming crowds gumming up the pipes for everyone.
Hard Drives Too Pokey for Fiber Speeds
Your internet connection might download at breakneck speed, but physical hard drives crawl along on their hands knees in comparison. A typical 7200 RPM desktop hard disk drive (HDD) maxes out around 100-200 MB/s write speeds for sequential transfers.
That might sound pretty nippy already…until you realize most standard HDDs achieve no better than 1-10 MB/s writing lots of small files simultaneously – precisely the use case hammering hard drives during Steam downloads.
| Write Speed HDD | Write Speed SSD | |
| Max Sequential | 100-200 MB/s | 500-1000+ MB/s |
| Small Files | 1-10 MB/s | 100-500+ MB/s |
With a fiber line pumping 100+ Mb (12.5 MB) of data per second to your PC, even the beefiest HDDs buckle as the drive queues up gigabytes of incoming asset files and texture packs from your next digital adventure.
Upgrading to solid state drive (SSD) storage capable of real-world writes up to 500-1000+ MB blows HDD bottlenecks out of the water for vastly faster Steam downloads.
NVMe SSDs Maximize Steam Download Speeds
For truly extreme Steam performance, NVMe PCIe SSD drives unlock sequential write throughput up to a stonking 3500 MB/s! Even factoring real-world usage drag for random access across small files, NVMe SSDs deliver blistering multi-gigabyte writes perfect for Steam downloads.
WiFi Interference Sabotages Speeds
Gamers hardwired via Ethernet laugh scornfully watching WiFi warriors suffering dropped packets and wildly fluctuating pings. And Wireless internet absolutely tanks Steam download performance as well compared to smooth wired speeds.
That‘s because WiFi deteriorates rapidly with distance and intervening physical barriers. Walls, floors, other devices blasting wireless signals and even Microwave ovens interfere resulting in retransmission demands, congestion, and throttled maximum rates.
Use Wired Ethernet For Faster Gaming Downloads
Banishing WiFi entirely with wired Ethernet is hands-down the most robust and enduring solution for achieving reliably fast performance. With peak 1 Gbps Ethernet now affordable for home users, say goodbye to temperamental wireless networking hamstringing Steam download speeds!
