Why are my two computers showing insanely different download speeds?

[Kanano]

On my own PC, I'm looking at currently downloading Path of Exile 2. By myself, with nobody else using the internet in the house (I can 100% confirm this), I cap out at 10MB/s. However, when my boyfriend starts downloading, he jumps up anywhere between 30MB/s to 60MB/s.

Our internet has a 500MB/s download speed, and I know that while Steam shows "MB", they're actually talking megabytes, while ISPs say "Mb" for megabits, which is 1/8th of a (mega)byte. I know the MB cap of the house is roughly 60. I get that. I also get that if we both download there's a cap of 60 between us.

What I don't get is that by myself, without anyone else downloading anything, I cap out around 10MB/s. The moment he jumps in he's already way higher than mine. I'm not a schooled network engineer or anything, but I know quite a bit about computers, just not networking, so I'm not sure what's going on.

Any thoughts on why this is the case? Is there a setting in steam/the house's router I need to change? I'm not looking to be #1 of the house, which I do pay for, but I just want to download a bit faster and not take 2 and a half hours, versus his 45 minutes.

As a bit of specs on my pc.
Motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Memory: 24GB, one 8GB stick of DDR4 at about 2133hz, and a couple other 8GB at around 2400hz

This does not affect JUST PoE2, it happens every time on other large game downloads, without fail.[/b]

[Yujah]

Your specs are generally good but you don't mention your storage. Specifically a known issue with some NVMe drives (WD Blue is best known) is where Steam download interact badly with write-caching; e.g.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/wqrdtv/comment/j19vd5g/

Advise there a bit down the thread is to use the WD SSD Software, If you don't have a WD drive perhaps SSD-specific software for your model also allows for disabling write-caching, and it should also work to do the same directly from Windows using e.g.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/21904-enable-disable-disk-write-caching-windows-10-a.html

[Tezzious]

are you wireless or wired, is your wired connection showing 100Mb or 1000Mb, if wireless how far from the router are you.

[wInvo. ☠ Ｄ Ａ Ｎ Ｔ Ｅ]

Different LAN Cable Types maybe. CAT5 or CAT6 check it, u need cat6 atleast

[smokerob79]

cat 5 is fine and will handle more then the whole home internet connection can give them....being stuck right at 10MB makes me think you have a device that only runs a 100mb in between the slow PC......

oh and on the memory no matter what get rid of the slow stick of memory.....its just not worth keeping as its slowing the other sticks down....

a quick way to find out if you are willing to swap the PC placements.....see if the fast PC is slow on the other ones connection......