Hiya! I do tend to play with a lot of CC – I’m not sure I’ve ever quite reached 20 GB, but I came close. My current computer handles it well, so while I do experience some crashing from time to time, I wouldn’t consider it extremely problematic. But to answer your question, yes, I have dealt with many problems caused by my incurable CC-downloading addiction. :3

Does your game tend to crash at certain points? For example, when you try to change a Sim’s outfit, or turn through a certain page in the buy catalog? If it keeps crashing at the same time, it’s possible you have a single piece of problem CC that can be isolated. When I have a situation like this (which happens a lot), I use the 50-50 method outlined here. Essentially, you split your downloads in half, test each half in-game separately to see if the crash persists. If the crash happens with half of the CC and not the other, you can determine that one half of your CC is “safe” and that the problem lies in the other half. Then you would repeat the process again, splitting the “bad” batch of CC in half and testing each half separately again. Eventually, you would isolate the problem piece of CC (I had to do this last night with my bodyshop defaults – I had something causing a conflict that I never would have guessed D:). 

If your crashing happens more sporadically, it’s possible that you’ve reached “critical mass” – rather, you’ve reached the maximum CC threshold that your game can tolerate before problems start occurring. Sometimes this manifests itself in the form of random crashes, sometimes you might experience graphical glitches (such as flashing purple on your lots). In this case, the best course of action is to cull some of your downloads. And believe me, I know it’s hard to part with some CC. 😛 I would recommend making a back-up of your downloads folder so you’ll still have all your CC should you ever need to find something again, but then be ruthless with deleting! I’ve been playing with CC for years, so if I come across a piece of custom content that I’ve never used no matter how beautiful it is or how long I’ve had it, I take it out. I’ve also heard that it’s not necessarily the number of downloads but the number of new meshes you have in the game. You could try to stick to a few different pieces of furniture and just download more recolors of them instead of having, say, twenty different sofas that only come in one color.

I hope this helps you somehow! If you need other help, I frequently refer to the help section of MTS. I’ve been able to solve just about every CC-related problem using some of the tips and suggestions outlined there. 🙂 Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that could lead to game crashes when you play with custom content – it’s something every Simmer faces time and time again. 😛 It’s frustrating to no end, but somehow we put up with it. Ah, the things we do for the love of the game! :3