Slow download speeds on high end PC? (Tried loads of fixes)

[SCB18]

Hello all,

This is my first post so please be gentle!

To start here are my PC specs;
ROG Crosshair VIII Formula MOBO
AMD Ryzen 9 3950x CPU
G.Skill 64GB DDR4 3600 RAM
Gigabyte Aorus NVMe gen4 PCIe M.2 1TB SSD
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti OC Edition 11GB GDDR6
WD 1TB HDD
Windows 10 Home 64bit

Today I was downloading a piece of software to my main PC and my laptop and suddenly realised that my laptop was downloading it at about 41Mbps but my PC was downloading at around 5-6Mbps (task manager). I thought this was odd so downloaded them again and had the exact same results. I then tried from a another PC on my network and it again downloaded at around 40Mbps but my high end PC was stuck at 5-6Mbps.

I began investigating and thought it was maybe a bad ethernet cable, so tried a new one and was still the same. I then plugged my laptop into the exact same ethernet cable and got fast speeds so I ruled out any networking hardware straight away (my network is all unifi equipment). My PC has a ASUS mobo which has a 1g ethernet adapter, a 5g ethernet adapter and wi-fi 6 adapter. I have tried the same scenario on all three networking adapters and still get the same slow speeds even after updating all drivers and checking they are all set to forced gig duplexing.

I then tried all of the following steps with no improvement;
 

1. I tried to download the same file via Microsoft edge instead of chrome with no difference.
2. I have tried moving my downloads folder from my M.2 drive to the HDD drive in case of a software bottleneck there but again the same slow speeds.
3. Updated the BIOS, all chipsets and windows - no difference
4. I do not have ROG GameFirst installed
5. I disabled all antivirus programs and closed all unnecessary background programs
6. Ran a speed test using speedtest.net and get about 37Mbps download!
7. Tried downloading files from another site and it got to about 17Mbps sometimes but this is still far from the 40Mbps my other devices are getting
8. I have checked that no power saving options are turned on for the ethernet adapters or my system
9. I have uninstalled tunnel bear VPN in case this was clashing somehow

I don't think I am missing anything obvious and I am all out of ideas so any help would be greatly appreciated before I decide to do a full windows reinstall.

 

   

 

Image 1: Slow download speed problem PC
Image 2: C drive speeds on problem PC
Image 3: Much faster speeds same ethernet cable on Laptop
Image 4: I tried a file transfer from my internal server to my M.2 drive and have decent speeds (816Mbps) so not a hardware or driver limitation surly?

Thanks in advanced

 

[flashiling]

what download/upload do you pay for?

what program are you downloading and from where, platforms like battle.net and steam have options to limit bandwidth speed (which i sadly have to use) which could be enabled at 5Mbps, and these settings are not account wide afaik.

do you also have a special network card on your laptop compared to your pc, and does it have proper drirvers

[SCB18]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I get about 40 down from my ISP and I have tried downloading the same file on multiple computers in my network and they all can achieve this except for my PC. I am downloading from this test site https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download

 

No specials NICs on my other devices and besides this PC has a 1gig and a 5 gig ethernet port as well as wi-fi 6 and they all have the same slow download issues.

[Vishera]

12 minutes ago, SCB18 said:

this PC has a 1gig and a 5 gig ethernet port as well as wi-fi 6

Did you install their drivers?

I also recommend to download and install the newest drivers for each one of them.

[SCB18]

8 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Did you install their drivers?

I also recommend to download and install the newest drivers for each one of them.

I have reinstalled the drivers for all three using the latest versions and have also tried the drivers direct from Intels site. I have also installed the latest bios and chipset drivers. What I am finding odd is that when doing a network transfer it is hitting 800 odd Mbps as shown in image 4. Surly if the drivers were to blame then the speeds would be limited there also?

[Vishera]

3 minutes ago, SCB18 said:

I have reinstalled the drivers for all three using the latest versions and have also tried the drivers direct from Intels site. I have also installed the latest bios and chipset drivers. What I am finding odd is that when doing a network transfer it is hitting 800 odd Mbps as shown in image 4. Surly if the drivers were to blame then the speeds would be limited there also?

In case of bad drivers or hardware you would encounter weird behaviors that don't make any sense.

[SCB18]

12 minutes ago, Vishera said:

In case of bad drivers or hardware you would encounter weird behaviors that don't make any sense.

I have just uninstalled the drivers for both the 1 gig and 5 gig ethernet ports and then installed the latest versions from the manufacturers site but still getting the same issue although the speeds have been hitting 16Mbps now (still well below the 40mbps the other devices are getting). I am thinking this is not a driver issue but instead either a software bottleneck somewhere or a disk write bottle neck perhaps.  

[Vishera]

5 minutes ago, SCB18 said:

or a disk write bottle neck perhaps.  

I don't think so,modern hard drives have no problems with such speeds,

My hard drive can take 1Gbps no problems.

 

In your case it's really hard diagnose the problem.

Maybe someone else here knows.

[SCB18]

31 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I don't think so,modern hard drives have no problems with such speeds,

My hard drive can take 1Gbps no problems.

 

In your case it's really hard diagnose the problem.

Maybe someone else here knows.

Yea I know what you're saying and mine should be especially fine as it is an M.2 drive. But I am wondering if some kind of software link between the drive and NIC is occuring somewhere. Anyways I hope someone can find me a solution as it is really annoying me now! Thanks for the help.

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, SCB18 said:

I am wondering if some kind of software link between the drive and NIC is occuring somewhere.

You can test that with Linux,

A live CD version would be enough and doesn't require installation.

 

You can pick Manjaro if you don't know what to pick,it's easy to use and relatively friendly to Windows users.

[SCB18]

2 hours ago, Vishera said:

You can test that with Linux,

A live CD version would be enough and doesn't require installation.

 

You can pick Manjaro if you don't know what to pick,it's easy to use and relatively friendly to Windows users.

Brilliant idea! I will try that before a fresh windows install!

[SCB18]

Quick question. Would running windows in a Oracle Virtual box test this in the same way?