Players are always eager to download and play the latest patch as soon as a new update rolls out. But sometimes players will face download speed issues which makes it hard to even download a minor patch and play the game.
This problem is pretty common among valorant players as each region has its own dedicated download servers. Sometimes during a major update, the servers are flooded with loads of download requests which slows down the download speed for everyone on the server. While server traffic is just one factor that isn’t in your control, there are other factors that you can control to improve/fix your download speeds.
How to fix slow download speed?
1. Close background applications: Even if you own a high-end pc with good internet, some background applications will tank your PC performance to a crawl. It is advised to always disable and close as many background applications as possible while downloading the game patch. This will free up more ram, CPU, and internet bandwidth for Riot’s game client to utilize.
2. Minimize the game client: if you have a not-so-modern pc on which you play Valorant, minimizing the client helps to reduce the CPU/ram usage which will sometimes boost download speeds. Since the game client downloads and patches the game at the same time, the game client will need to allocate more pc resources. Minimizng the game client on older pc will cut down a little on client usage and speed up the performance.
3. Reset router: nowadays most routers will cache DNS and site data for faster loading times. Most of the time it works reliably and actually increases the performance of websites, but sometimes these caches can get corrupted and cause issues later. Resetting the router will flush out old cache data and re-build new cache files which will fix any issues that are caused due to old and corrupt cache files.
4. Change DNS server: Most ISPs will automatically set a suitable DNS server that is close to your location and will provide the best performance. Sometimes the DNS servers used by ISPs can be slowed down due to traffic or maintenance, in that case, you can use open public DNS servers that are free to use. Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is one of the best and most popular public DNS that is used widely. You can also try out Google’s 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 DNS servers in case you are having issues with Cloudflare DNS.
5. Use a VPN (not recommended): only try this if other methods didn’t work for you. Using a VPN can fix your download speeds incase your ISP is throttling connection or taking a longer route to the destination server (i.e. ISP is looping requests through many places before reaching the destination). Just remember to only use the VPN server of your country (i.e. don’t use a European VPN server if you are from Asia or vice versa). Also only use VPN to download and install updates, don’t play the game with VPN enabled.
