Why Is Sims 4 Taking So Long to Load?

Almost always mods, cache, or hardware — here’s what’s slowing it down and how to fix it

---

Sims 4 loading screens that stretch from seconds into minutes — whether at launch, when loading a save, or when traveling between lots — have become increasingly common as the game has grown.

The game has expanded dramatically over the years through expansions, game packs, stuff packs, and kits, and that growth has made load times progressively worse. But specific factors make it worse than it needs to be, and most of them are fixable.

---

The Core Reason: Sims 4 Is a Large Game Now

Before getting into fixes, it helps to understand the baseline. Sims 4 launched in 2014 as a relatively compact game.

In 2024 it has dozens of expansion packs, hundreds of gigabytes of optional content, and a codebase that has been layered and extended continuously for a decade. The base game alone is significantly larger than it was at launch.

Every piece of content you have installed — every pack, every mod, every piece of custom content — contributes to load time.

There is no configuration that makes a fully loaded Sims 4 installation load as fast as the vanilla 2014 version. The realistic goal is optimizing what’s in your installation and making sure nothing is actively making it worse than it needs to be.

---

Mods and Custom Content Are the Biggest Factor

If you have mods or custom content installed, they are almost certainly the primary cause of extended load times.

Sims 4 loads every mod and CC file individually at startup — each file adds to the initialization time, and the relationship isn’t linear.

A few dozen files add a little time. Hundreds of files add significant time. Thousands of files can turn a launch into a five to ten minute ordeal.

Go to your Mods folder — typically at Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Mods. Check how many files are in there. If you have thousands of .package files, this is your load time.

Immediate steps to reduce mod-related load time:

Remove mods and CC you no longer use. It’s easy to accumulate content over years without pruning it. A significant portion of most players’ mod folders consists of CC they downloaded once and never use.

Keep your folder structure shallow. Sims 4 scans subfolders but deep nesting can slow the scan. Keep folders no more than one or two levels deep.

Remove outdated mods. Old mods that haven’t been updated for recent patches are not only useless — they can actively slow loading and cause errors. Check the last updated date for your script mods especially.

Test without mods entirely. Move your entire Mods folder to the desktop temporarily and launch the game. If load time drops dramatically, mods are definitively the cause and you can restore them selectively.

---

Clear the Cache Files

Sims 4 maintains several cache files that are supposed to speed things up but become bloated or corrupted over time and have the opposite effect. Clearing them forces the game to rebuild them from scratch — the first load after clearing takes about the same time but subsequent loads often improve.

Navigate to Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 and delete the following files and folders:

• localthumbcache.package
• The entire cache folder contents
• The entire cachestr folder contents
• The entire onlinethumbnailcache folder if it exists

Don’t delete the Mods folder, saves, or tray files — only the cache files listed above. The game recreates these automatically on the next launch.

This is one of the most consistently recommended fixes in the Sims community and genuinely helps in many cases — particularly if you haven’t done it in a while.

---

The Game Is Installed on a Slow Drive

Where Sims 4 is installed has a dramatic impact on load times. The game performs significant disk I/O during loading — reading thousands of files from storage. The speed of that storage determines how long the loading takes.

HDD (traditional hard drive): Sims 4 loads slowly on a mechanical hard drive. The sequential read and random access speeds of HDDs are simply too slow for the volume of small files Sims 4 loads. Long load times on an HDD are expected and the fix is migrating to SSD.

SATA SSD: Noticeably faster than HDD. Load times drop significantly — often by half or more compared to HDD. A reasonable baseline for modern Sims 4 performance.

NVMe SSD: The fastest consumer storage option. Sims 4 loads appreciably faster on NVMe than SATA SSD, particularly with large mod libraries.

If you’re running Sims 4 from an HDD, moving the installation to an SSD is the single most impactful hardware upgrade available for load time. Most modern PCs have at least one SSD — installing Sims 4 there if it isn’t already is a meaningful change.

---

Insufficient RAM

Sims 4 benefits significantly from available RAM. The game caches content in memory during a session — the more RAM available, the more it can cache, and the faster subsequent loads and travel between lots become.

Base game only: 8GB of system RAM is the minimum for reasonable performance. With multiple packs installed: 16GB is the practical minimum for smooth loading. With large mod libraries: 16GB to 32GB makes a noticeable difference.

If your system has 8GB and you’re running multiple packs plus mods, RAM pressure is likely contributing to slow loads. When RAM is full, the game spills to virtual memory on disk — which is dramatically slower than actual RAM.

Check RAM usage in Task Manager → Performance → Memory while Sims 4 is loading. If you’re at 90% or more of available RAM during the load process, more RAM would help.

---

Too Many Installed Packs

Every expansion pack, game pack, and stuff pack installed adds content that the game loads at startup. Players who own every pack have significantly more content loading than players with a smaller collection — not just because of file size but because each pack adds its own initialization routines.

This doesn’t mean uninstalling packs you paid for. But if you bought packs during sales and rarely use them, temporarily disabling them through EA App’s installation management can reduce load time. Uninstalling packs you genuinely don’t play with and reinstalling them when you want them is a valid strategy for managing load times.

---

CPU and GPU Performance

While storage is usually the bottleneck during loading, CPU performance affects how quickly the game processes and initializes what it loads. An older or lower-end CPU adds processing time on top of the disk read time.

There’s less to do here from a settings perspective — CPU performance is a hardware characteristic. But making sure no other CPU-intensive applications are running during Sims 4 launch gives the game more of the CPU’s attention during initialization.

Close background applications before launching — browsers with many tabs, streaming software, video editors, and similar tools all compete for CPU time that Sims 4 needs during loading.

---

EA App and Origin Overhead

The launcher itself adds time before Sims 4 even begins loading. The EA App (formerly Origin) initializes, checks for updates, verifies your library, and establishes online connectivity before handing off to the game. On slower systems or slow internet connections this overhead is noticeable.

Keep the EA App updated — older versions have known performance issues that newer versions address. Go to the EA App’s settings and check for updates.

Consider launching the EA App before you intend to play so it finishes its initialization before you want to load the game. Starting the app a few minutes early means by the time you click Play, the launcher overhead is already done.

---

Repair the Game Files

Corrupted game files can cause abnormally long load times as the game attempts to process damaged data. EA App provides a repair tool that checks and restores corrupted files.

Open the EA App, go to your game library, find The Sims 4, click the three dots, and select Repair. The repair process checks all game files and redownloads any that are corrupted or missing. This can take time depending on your internet speed but often resolves loading issues caused by damaged files.

---

Graphics Settings During Loading

High graphics settings don’t directly affect loading time — graphics settings affect in-game rendering performance, not the file loading process. However if your system is struggling with memory or CPU resources, having high graphics settings configured can contribute to overall resource pressure during the initialization phase.

If you’re on a lower-end system, setting graphics to Medium before launching and then adjusting once in-game can slightly reduce the resource competition during loading.

---

The 50/50 Method for Diagnosing Mod Issues

If mods are causing slow loading but you have a large collection and can’t identify the culprit, the 50/50 method is the standard diagnostic approach in the Sims community.

Move half your mods out of the Mods folder. Launch the game and time the load. If load time improves dramatically, the problematic content is in the half you removed. If it’s still slow, the issue is in the half you left in. Restore the problematic half and split it again — move half of that out and test again. Repeat until you’ve isolated the specific file or files causing the worst load times.

This is tedious but systematic and reliably identifies problem files in large mod collections.

---

A Quick Checklist

Work through these in order of impact:

• Move or remove mods and CC — test load time without them to confirm their impact
• Clear cache files — delete localthumbcache.package and contents of cache folders
• Move the game to an SSD if currently on HDD — highest impact hardware change
• Check available RAM — 16GB minimum for modded play
• Close background applications before launching to free CPU and RAM
• Repair game files through the EA App
• Remove outdated or unused mods — prune the Mods folder regularly
• Keep Mods folder structure shallow — no deep subfolder nesting
• Update the EA App to the latest version
• Consider disabling unused packs temporarily to test their impact

---

The Bottom Line

Sims 4 taking a long time to load is almost always caused by a large mod and custom content library, cache files that need clearing, or the game being installed on a slow hard drive. The mod audit and cache clear together resolve most cases — and the SSD migration, if you’re on HDD, produces the most dramatic improvement of any single change.

The game’s load time increases with every pack and mod installed — there’s no getting around that. The goal is ensuring nothing is making it worse than it has to be, and the checklist above covers every factor within your control.

Sims 4 loads everything you’ve given it — less content, cleaner cache, and faster storage are the three levers that matter most.