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Couldn't you still fry a PSU if the cable assumed multiple common pins to the PSU, but the PSU had different voltages across those connectors?

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At least for the layouts listed here: https://pc-mods.com/blogs/psu-pinout-repository

The motherboard cables do all kinds of different scary crossovers so never separate them, though you'll probably never have an "extra" motherboard cable in the first place.

None of the other cables bridge pins on the PSU side, they "just" scramble the pins they're attached to at the other end.

I guess, but that seems unusual. Pins are split all the time, for instance to turn a 6pin PCI connector into a substandard 8pin one, but the reverse? Merging multiple source pins into fewer output pins by shorting them together?

Visual inspection would normally catch situations like that, and then you might be able to figure out if it's okay with continuity checks and voltage checks with a multimeter on the relevant pints of the psu to see if those pins are different voltages... as long as the PSU powers the connector in the absence of load or sense pin signalling.

You don't need to be merging multiple source pins into fewer output pins; it's very normal for multiple ground pins to appear on an output connector, and for the 12V GPU and motherboard pins you see multiple output pins at 12V as well.

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