Shadowing Practice: I Bought A Modded RTX 3080 From Aliexpress... - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.

191 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

One month ago now, I tried to buy one of the most ridiculous graphics cards I've ever seen on AliExpress.

A 20 gig version of an RTX 3080.

Now if you don't know why

that gets me as giddy as a 30 -somethings lady reading a court of thorns and roses,

the standard version of the 3080 only has 10 gigs of video memory.

Which means some mad genius of an AliExpress seller figured out how to double it.

I'm guessing by strapping it to a table and injecting peptides into its nipples until it reversed its memory pattern boldness.

I think that's how that works, or they lied about it.

But despite my feverish attempts to buy one,

I was having a real tough time navigating the hellscape that is buying a GPU on AliExpress in 2026.

I made a whole video about it, link down below for the full story.

But for today's video, something very exciting happened.

It actually came.

Apparently not buying from the prosthetic limb guy was the way to go

and i'm just

so excited to see this graphics card all

it took me was paying like 300 more than i wanted to for it oh

now the beast is contained in a whole bunch of bubble wrap

which is like top three types of wrap in my opinion

i'm just gonna oh yeah a bunch of gross plastic to go in the ocean very exciting

oh there's a strong like industrial smell coming off it that's actually a good sign

that means it's real primo aliexpress merchandise the more noxious the chemical smell is the better

it's also in an unmarked box

which has some soft foam on the top

this is like small batch graphics card we don't even have any kind of like brand material on it

which is fascinating to see

and uh there it is oh it's got some real heft to it whoa

it's already looking cool here is our graphics card in a heavily reused anti -static bag

which is fine whoa straight off the bat this is a fascinating pcb

because it's got multiple kind of like soldering points for the power connectors

and they decided to go with the dual 8 pin on

the front of the card again all of this makes sense the fact

that we get like a blower cooler with it and stuff

because well this card isn't really designed for gaming this is more oriented people who want to run some llm action

on their local machines what's weirder though is the envy link connector i'm pretty sure just the 3090 supported

that but they did kind of like plastic it out a bit

so maybe this is a one size fits all pcb i guess we'll find out

when we take the cooler off this is actually plastic really it is a metal shroud

that wraps around a bit of plastic cover

but from the weight of the graphics card there's oh clearly some big heatsink going on

and when you turn the graphics card around you get a peek at it

that is actually what looks like a solid copper fin stack

which is real rare in graphics cards

and it might be part of why this thing is

so heavy we've also got some pretty standard io for an rtx 3080 on the back

and then it also tells us

that this is a 20 gig rtx 3080 i am

so excited now there were some weird discrepancies in the listing of this graphics card the listing was saying

that it's an rtx 3080 3080 ti 3080m

and then there's a dedicated bit in the description saying

that the 3080m has high compatibility with laptops although this is apparently an ai generator description

so does that mean the whole listing was just conjured up in an aliexpress llm poppers fever dream

because the performance difference between the mobile variant of the 3080

and the desktop variant is pretty huge

so I'm really hoping we've got a desktop one in here

but at the same time a mobile GPU in here would also be fascinating I feel like

that would almost be the more interesting option

so I'm kind of conflicted about which one I want so with

that we've had a quick first look at this Cronenberg AliExpress RTX 3080 maybe an M 20 gig graphics card

which is a real exciting sentence for me to say uh

so we're gonna jump into the future now

and do a quick teardown of this card whereas me i'm gonna go test it oh

i genuinely can't wait to have a look under the hood of this thing

Whoa, even random AliExpress no -name brand seller hides a screw under a sticker.

That's...

crazy oh it does come off never mind oh no

i tore some uh some thermal pads these are actually very cheap thermal pads holy crap wow

this is a bunch of video memory on the back here

so does that mean

that instead of replacing the memory on one side with double the the capacity kind of modules

they designed a PCB where you can add more on the back

I mean I guess there's just one way to find out

and after some time struggling to pry the cooler off I realized I missed something oh I missed a screw

that was under the back plate there we go oh my god oh wow yeah

that is what they did i am at half vast looking at

that pcb what is going on there uh

but first we're gonna have a look at our cooler

which has a big ass vapor chamber all along the bottom of the copper heatsink you don't see

that every day but as you can tell everything makes nice contact with the pcb

and there's a lot to make contact with

that might be the craziest power delivery i've ever seen on a gpu

there are one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen

there are 18 phases on this thing

which is madness i don't know how those phases are shared between the gpu

and the memory uh

but it's also some of it used to uh to feed the memory on the back

i was gonna say i wonder if this is the same pcb

that they use for like a 3090 or a 3090 ti

because we have that envy link support on the back here

but there's only two eight pin slots although i guess you can technically have the two in the front connected

and the two on the side connected at the same time

i don't know i don't design pcbs uh either way

that is there's just crazy stuff going on under here now

when it comes the components on the pcb i couldn't get information

that made sense to me for most of them

but i'm still going to show them to you so that

if it means something to you maybe

you could share with the class in the comment section down below either way

this was not what i was expecting to see under

100

that cooler what a crazy pcb with all 20 of its one gig memory modules with

101

that let's see if this wild creation even works.

102

It is the moment of truth.

103

I am very excited to see if this graphics card actually runs.

104

I have a splosion cam set up so we have a front row seat to things going wrong if they do.

105

But let's press the power button and see what happens.

106

okay the screen capture is showing stuff happening hey

107

there we go yay we've got a signal straight off the bat the most mind -blowing thing about this was

108

that the nvidia drivers were just completely unfazed by the card

109

they installed with no problem msi afterburner also immediately identified the

110

card the system was acting up a little bit though

111

so i decided to drop it in a different system

112

which ran perfectly fine with the card in it here is the gpu z page

113

which just reads it as an rtx 3080 ga 102

114

so this seems to be a full -fledged desktop die

115

that we have in here resize bar disabled okay i need to go re -enable

116

that it's turned that off

117

and then in here memory size 20 gigs with a bandwidth of 760 gigabits per second

118

which yeah that's pretty good so i turned resize bar on in the bios

119

and got to testing now we're starting off with cyberpunk running at 1440p high settings i'm using high settings

120

so that it can scale into 4k and hopefully handle the game

121

and the first thing that you'll notice is the power draw at 320 watts

122

and then the temperatures oh no the temperatures we're we're already at 82 degrees celsius

123

and the graphics card is getting progressively more shouty at me from the from the side over here

124

it is impressive how the 3080 crushes this game at 1440p

125

but it makes complete sense the 3080 is still a powerful gpu

126

and it was a high -end graphics card when this game came out

127

so like it it makes sense that it runs it very well wow that noise

128

interestingly despite losing half our framerate jumping to 4k our memory utilization barely jumped up

129

and it wasn't anywhere near crossing that 10 gig threshold

130

so I jumped the settings up to ultra with ray tracing on which finally got us over 10 gigs

131

Oh, there we go.

132

That is well over 10 gigs that we're using now.

133

Does that mean that with the normal card, instead of 20 frames per second, we're going to get one frame per second?

134

What is amazing about this is how unfazed the drivers are by what's going on here.

135

I was expecting there to be really big driver issues with this card

136

and that we were going to have to use like a virus driver

137

that they sent to us in a Google Docs drive or whatever.

138

so we're going to do ultra 1440p without any upscaling in doom the dark ages

139

and i think what's going to be a very useful setting slider is this bad boy

140

because this might let us be able to oh yeah

141

there we go wow at 1440p we're already right up against

142

that 10 gig limitation with a playable frame rate

143

so doom the dark ages might actually be a game where we can get a considerable performance difference between this

144

and the stock card.

145

And at 4k that utilization jumps up to a hemorrhoid shattering almost 13 gigs.

146

Now at 35 -ish frames per second I wouldn't want to play the game this way

147

but the graphics card's holding up pretty well here.

148

Now at 1440p we're just skirting up against 10 gigs here in The Last of Us with ultra settings

149

which means at 4k we should definitely be able to utilize the more legroom we've got going here.

150

Now, unfortunately, The Last of Us doesn't let us set a resolution higher than the one on our display, but with the render scale option,

151

it actually gives us what the rendered resolution is.

152

So I'm going to use 4096 by 2304, which is a lot.

153

It's a little bit above 4K.

154

And here again, we're tantalizingly close to 13 gigs of memory utilization

155

so let's drop a standard 10 gig rtx 3080 into the system to see

156

if these resolutions grind it down into a fine paste now this is very weird

157

but i immediately ran into problems with my evga xc3 card

158

i couldn't get it to draw more than 250 watts while gaming

159

which is way less than what this card is normally supposed to draw i tried overclocking the graphics card

160

which is just ignored then i ddu wiped the drivers

161

i installed new firmware on the graphics card updated the bios on the motherboard

162

and even tested the graphics card in a different system

163

but i just couldn't get

164

it to behave differently what a backwards world where the macgybird aliexpress abomination has no problems

165

but my evga card is throwing a massive tantrum

166

now this reduction in power draw led to a nine percent

167

drop in frame rate at cyberpunk 1440p high settings compared to the aliexpress card

168

but unfortunately i don't have another 3080

169

so we're just gonna have to use this sick card for the comparison

170

now with cyberpunk cranked to the wall at 4k

171

we dropped from 20 frames per second on the 20 gig aliexpress card to about 12.

172

so yeah the 10 gig cards running like an asthmatic ebola sufferer here

173

but it didn't quite fall off a cliff in the way

174

that i was expecting but luckily doom the dark ages happily scratches

175

that itch where we drop from the high 30s into about five frames per second oh yeah

176

that's what a memory bottleneck looks like

177

but weirdly the same thing didn't happen with the last of us

178

now even with our diseased rtx 3080 the last of us is running very well

179

it's not running super well compared to the not diseased card

180

which i still can't believe is the aliexpress one

181

but we are getting very close to our memory limit here

182

so i think this is going to be another game where we're just gonna throat punch

183

this graphics card right in the balls

184

it didn't at 4k the performance drop was the exact same ratio as at 1440p

185

so of course for gaming

186

it makes zero sense paying almost a thousand dollars for this modded rtx 3080 from aliexpress

187

and i don't know much about self -hosting llms

188

but surely even there you're better off buying like a 32 gig v100 card for 400 canadian dollars less

189

which brings me to the end of our time with this fascinating aliexpress graphics card

190

if you enjoyed this video share it with your friends subscribe to the channel

191

and until the next one thank you for watching bye

Download App

Everything you need to speak fluently

AI PronunciationScore every sentence

IPA PracticeMaster every sound

VocabularyBuild your word bank

Vocab GameLearn while playing

Scan QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

Recommend Video

462 sentences

Expensive RTX 5090 for LLMs? NO. Use This Instead. (Tesla V100 SXM2 + Z8 G4, #RACERRRZ)

Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

495 sentences

Dropshipping Day 495: finally got my shopify plaque + spending $4k a day on meta

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

123 sentences

Poking Apple’s Touchscreen MacBook Pro: What Actually Impressed Me

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

8 sentences

Steam Frame Unboxing

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

109 sentences

2024 Scott Ransom Review | Unique Looks AND Performance With A Wild 6-Bar Suspension Design

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

25 sentences

building a PC with 180mm case fans

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

74 sentences

What's Inside a Credit Card Chip? How It Actually Works

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

126 sentences

What Can a $50 Laptop Do?!? (2026)

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

252 sentences

Memory is crazy expensive so I made my own…

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “I Bought A Modded RTX 3080 From Aliexpress..”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: card, graphics, gig, Aliexpress, memory. This video has 18 sentences and 2320 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:35. The speaker talks at a natural 159 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding. 4 of its 18 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
graphics noun	/ˈɡɹæfɪks/	The making of architectural or design drawings.
gig noun	/ɡɪɡ/	Originally (music), a performing engagement by a musician or musical group; (by extension, film, television, theater) a job or role for a performer.
ultra noun	/ˈʌltɹə/	A political extremist, in particular
desktop noun	/ˈdɛsktɒp/	The top surface of a desk.
installed verb	/ɪnˈstɔːld/	readied for use
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
copper noun	/ˈkɒpə/	A reddish-brown metallic chemical element (symbol Cu) with the atomic number 29; also, the metal made up of this element.
sink verb	/ˈsɪŋk/	To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance.
wrap verb	/ɹæp/	To enclose (an object) completely in any flexible, thin material such as fabric or paper.
thermal adjective	/ˈθɜːməl/	Pertaining to heat or temperature.
pad noun	/pæd/	A flattened mass of anything soft, to sit or lie on.
module noun	/ˈmɑd͡ʒul/	A self-contained component of a system, often interchangeable, which has a well-defined interface to the other components.
render verb	/ˈɹɛn.dɚ/	To cause to become.
variant noun	/ˈvæɹi.ənt/	Something that is slightly different from a type or norm.
cellar noun	/ˈsɛləɹ/	An enclosed underground space, often under a building, used for storage or shelter.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come off verb		To become detached.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
act up verb	/ækt ˈʌp/	To misbehave; to cause trouble.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
fall off verb		To become detached or to drop from.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
hold up verb		To wait or delay.
jump up verb		To move from one position to a higher position by one jump.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I think that's how that works.
Whereas me, I'm going to go test it.
You don't see that every day.
Yay, we've got a signal.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is contained · isn't really designed · was just conjured
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've ever seen · we've had

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 53 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/, bandwidth /ˈbændwɪdθ/, motherboard /ˈmʌðɚˌbɔɹd/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, ratio /ˈɹeɪ.ʃoʊ/, explosion /ɛkˈsploʊ.ʒən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, considerable /kənˈsɪdəɹəbl̩/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like graphics, gig, ultra.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: I Bought A Modded RTX 3080 From Aliexpress... - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Download App

Expensive RTX 5090 for LLMs? NO. Use This Instead. (Tesla V100 SXM2 + Z8 G4, #RACERRRZ)

I Brought My $200,000 Vintage Rolls Royce To Puerto Rico

Acebeam L16 v2.0 Review - Long Range Tactical Flashlight

The Assassin's Teapot Is Weird

Dropshipping Day 495: finally got my shopify plaque + spending $4k a day on meta

Poking Apple’s Touchscreen MacBook Pro: What Actually Impressed Me

Steam Frame Unboxing

2024 Scott Ransom Review | Unique Looks AND Performance With A Wild 6-Bar Suspension Design

building a PC with *180mm* case fans

What's Inside a Credit Card Chip? How It Actually Works

What Can a $50 Laptop Do?!? (2026)

Memory is crazy expensive so I made my own…

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

building a PC with 180mm case fans