Steam downloads dropping to 0% and the fix
Hi all,
I have had issues for years with my PC downloading games and it constantly dropping to 0% and I couldn't figure out why most likely just like you reading this now.
Just so you know too, I have a 1gig internet connection and installing games on a 1TB SSD.
I have the following setup so it should be running fine
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
NZXT Kraken X63 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 PCle 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive - C drive
Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive - D drive
Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 PCle 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive - E drive
Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB Video Card
NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair RM750 (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Honestly I am not going to lie, I have tried multiple things too.
I have watched youtube videos, read posts on reddit, searched copilot and also followed guides on the internet such as Toms Hardware or whatever. I have followed these to a tee but nothing ever worked for me
The steps you have most likely also tried too are as followed
- What can I do if the Steam download speed drops to 0 ?
- 1. Check the Internet connection
- 2. Reset your router/modem
- 3. Try using a wired connection (LAN) instead of Wi-Fi
- 4. Clear download cache
- 5. Disable the Automatically detect settings option
- 6. Flush the Steam config and DNS
- 7. Disable the Diagnostics Tracking Service
- 8. Disable the Internet Flow Control of your Ethernet
- 9. Prioritize Steam downloads over other tasks
But none of these have ever worked for me or maybe they have but for like a minute or so.
Well anyway after all this time I had never thought it could be the drives that would cause this because nowhere I had ever read mentioned drives one. Not one single post, so I thought why not I would give it a try and low and behold this genuinely is the answer to the issue and I will give all of my findings below and the reasons why.
But if you are having this issue, please, double check your Task manager to see what your % is at and if it is maxing out because this could be the reason.
This is what my downloads were like on my E drive (What I usually install my games on)
And you may be thinking STFU because on EA launcher who GOG it installs fine. I quote a post I have seen before "Epic Games is downloading and installing just fine at very high speeds, it got 50GB at 700+ Mbps sustained for the whole duration of the download then installed pretty fast. The drive can withold that much data for very long, it was reading 125MB/s usage in the task manager and 70MB/s in Epic games. In steam it barely went over 10 MB/s, so I believe the 100% usage reading is a false alarm or something."
But yeah this is what my downloads were like on my E drive
Now compare this to my C drive
Check out the Active time, Average response times and write speeds on both cards.
It's crazy and I couldn't believe the difference.
It turns out the SN570 is known for having a small SLC cache, No DRAM and low sustained write speeds. Once that cache fills, the drive drops to HDD‑tier write speeds (5–20 MB/s) which at the time of buying I honestly had no clue
Everyone, I hope this does help some people and please when buying double or even triple check out the specs.
I believe I am going to swap out my Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 PCle 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive - E drive for a Crucial T710
Here are a few that might be worth checking out if you are having these issues but again check out the specs and I can't be 100% on these as I don't own them but maybe if you do have them hopefully you can confirm they are good or help people buy some
- WD Black SN850X
- Crucial T710
- Samsung 990 EVO Plus
- Kingston KC3000
- Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus
All of these have:
- DRAM
- TLC
- Strong controllers
- Huge SLC caches
- PCIe 4.0
- Excellent sustained writes
TLDR
My Steam downloads drop to 0% and the fix for me was my SSD because the Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 PCle 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive is known for having a small SLC cache, No DRAM and low sustained write speeds. Once that cache fills, the drive drops to HDD‑tier write speeds (5–20 MB/s)