Download Not Downloading Most of the Time

[junglejake]

This just started this morning. Downloads for the first couple of games on my recently factory reset computer were fine, but then I started downloading a new purchase this morning.

It got up to the usual speed of ~40MB/s, then dropped, sat with no number displaying in the side panel, then would get up to as fast as 2 MB/s before going back to naught.

I've tried:
Clearing my download cache,
Disabling my VPN and firewall
Switching download locations
Trying to download the same game onto another computer on the same network (was downloaded in a couple of minutes).

On my gaming desktop, though, the same game's been downloading for an hour and a half and has almost gotten to 25 of the 58 GB.

One of the Googles' solutions helps for a moment - clearing the cache gets the download speed back up to 30-40 MB/s for a few seconds before dropping to naught. I get the same thing if I restart Steam, though, so clearing the download cache may not have anything to do with it.

[Supafly]

Where are you downloading it too? What drive? Specs?

Steam downloads in compresssed chunks. Once a chunk is down it uncompresses and installs it.IF your CPU and/or drive is too busy doing that you're downloads will slow and may even stop until it is completed. Open task manager and see what % the drive and CPU is at when downloads slow. I'm assuming your gaming desktop has a better drive

[Jerry]

A very frequent issue, that is caused on your end: Your computer is not fast enough.
Steam downloads work a little different than those elsewhere, as they are unpacking and installing the files alongside, not afterwards. This puts a lot of work on the hard drive (which is the bottleneck in most cases) and above average on the CPU. Whenever the download is running too far ahead, it needs to wait for the rest to catch up.
If you want to even it out a little, you can limit your download speed to a lower level.