Speed tests shows between 2.3-2.5Gbps down and up. Honestly guys thanks for all you help I don’t want people getting annoyed or anything over the post.
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It’s likely your NVME drive is holding you back in this case. It’s filling it’s SLC buffer.
NVME drives can’t usually sustain the full writte speed for the whole drive. Once the SLC buffer is filled it can drop really low. In your drives case it drops to 140 MBps after writing 67GB. That’s likely on an empty drive, if the drive already has data on it the speed will llikely tank sooner and maybe lower too. Lower capacity drives suffer more too, the cache will be larger on higher capacity points.
“We wrote 67GB of data before write speeds degraded. Once performance faltered, the drive fell from 1,650 MBps of write throughput down to an average of 140 MBps.”
My steam downloads run about 1 Gbps with short spikes to 1.1/1.2 with a 3950x and utilisation around 25-30%. NVME is a 990 pro with sustained 2 GBps so hardware shouldn’t be a bottleneck. Sometimes I just think steam is “slow”. You might benefit from swapping out the NVME drive for something with higher sustained writes though. Yours is DRAM less as well which won’t help in heavy loads, especially when the SLC cache is filled.
Wow thanks for the thorough answer. I think I will maybe order a new nvme drive off Amazon then and test it. Would you recommend any in particular?
I’ll be amazed if you buy a new NVME drive and you can hit anywhere near your internet throughput with Steam decompression on the CPU you have.
The screenshot you sent, your drive was sitting at 20% utilisation, CPU was at 100%
I personally wouldn’t invest in a new NVME, your current CPU will still peg out at 100%
Just for reference, on my system the CPU is overclocked to 4.8Ghz and its being nailed across all cores.
But entirely up to you.
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Right guys thanks for all the answers.
So I think this will be maybe a Christmas gift if there is a new CPU out then if not then my son will just have to make do with one he has until one does come out. Then he can purchase it himself etc👍
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If it is the CPU bottlenecking then changing that will just shift the bottleneck onto the drive. So I’d try changing the drive first just because it’s the cheapest option and it’ll need changing anyway regardless.
As for which drive that’s going to depend on what capacity you want and how much you want to spend. Pick a drive then look up the specs to check the sustained writes. You may need to read reviews because the specs don’t always list it.
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The good thing is if you’re going to build your own pc, then buying a decent SSD NVME interface then you could always sling it into a new pc if it doesn’t work.
Well then. Maybe I was wrong and it is the processor bottlenecking in steam as it might be decompressing the content at the same time.
Try running some internet speed test to test if this gives you better download performance.
I disagree with Octo, because the drive is more than sufficient according to the specs and the task manager screenshot proves that it has a lot of spare performance left.
as per my previous post.
1 Gigabit is not 1 GigaByte. ISPs use Gigabits maybe for marketing reasons so on paper it looks very fast.
1 Byte = 8 bits
“2.5Gbps (this value is in bits) is around 280 MB/s (this value is in bytes)
His current hard drive write speed is 1,600MB/s (value in Bytes)”
The specs are the headline speed not the sustained speed.
It’s always been all theory for as long as I can remember back until you change and test and hit the next bottleneck we won’t agree 
Yeah that drive is a bottleneck, the question is is it a bottleneck now or after the CPU is changed.
I’d be very supprised if a modern CPU can’t keep up with steam. Zen 4 isn’t that old.
Just seen your edit. The listed write speed on the drive is just the max burst speed. After you write a bit this drops to 140 MB/s. See the quote from the linked review in my post above.
This is common practice for SSDs especially NVME drives.
@Octo
How would you explain these results from the screenshot then?
What’s to explain. The speeds are up to and sustained speed can and will drop to 140 MB/s. Just because it ran at that speed during the screenshot doesn’t mean it didn’t drop the second after. You need to read up on SSDs mate.
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Yeah it’ll fill up the DRAM first
That’s incorrect. it’s doesn’t store data in DRAM. It assignes a portion of the NAND to run in SLC mode, once that is filled it writes in TLC mode, or QLC if it’s a QLC drive, and that’s when the speed drops. The drive then needs some time, usually at idle, to replenish the SLC cache. Drive size and free space has an effect on the size of the SLC cache and how long it takes to recover.
Drive makers should make it clearer about the performance but higher equals better for the marketing department.
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I will tell you what guys you are all talking to technical for me I only know the basics😂
Sorry I’m trying to explain it as best I can. There are probably article out there that do a better job.
Basicly if you write constantly to your drive it will slow down and become slower than your internet. Other drives have higher sustained speed than your current one so it might be worth switching. It might not make a difference but if the bottleneck is your CPU it will categorically rule it out and won’t then be a limitation going forward.
Okay Thanks I will order a NVME then and then obviously rule this out
@supershaun , Out of curiosity, can you run CrystalDiskMark hard disk speed test to see what your hard drive speed really is. I think Lee might be more to the point as I didn’t see that you processor is really maxing out on Steam app whereas your hard drive wasn’t