Under German Law you would likely have a claim for damages under § 823 BGB as it is a "Weiterfresserschaden" literally "damage that eats further". In the float switch case a faulty float switch caused a building to burn down and the BGH awarded damages to the building owner. https://www-lecturio-de.translate.goog/mkt/jura-magazin/der-...

It would also be a straightforward claim in the UK.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-w...

I'd argue that if they first tell him to keep his existing cables and then send him a PSU that fries attached peripherals when operated with his existing cables, they're very much not in the clear...

Louis Rossmann did a video with 107k views so far already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cHDyq5hRk4

I would bet dollars to donuts that they lost a lot more than the replacement cost would have been.

On the other hand, this design decision was so stupid that they're likely to kill the hardware of a lot of other people too, so obviously the lawyers would want to... uh... help destroy the company's reputation.

Here's a question: If you're going to change the pinout of the connector, which is proprietary anyway, why is the connector not keyed for the pinout it's supposed to use so you can't plug in the wrong cable?

> why is the connector not keyed for the pinout it's supposed to use

Because it's cheaper to reuse the connectors they already have rather than to make a new one. /s

EDIT: Added a /s just to be on the safe side.

I really wonder if this was worth the few thousand they likely saved. You have two connectors(PSU and modular cable) with cost of what 1 cent a piece...

And it is not like they could not be used in some other model later...

We'll see about that after the lawyers get through with them.

Obviously I agree with your sentiment that this was a foolish and in the end a not-actually-cheaper solution, just saying that I think that was the argument used by the people responsible for the change.

It's insane that PSU manufacturers still haven't standardised the PSU-end of modular PSUs to this day. Or at the very least, standardised within one manufacturers offerings.

But I suppose I know the reason, it's more profitable if people can't reuse cables but have to get new ones every time they get a new PSU...

And motherboards don't have a standard front panel connector after like 35 years plus even though it'd be easy and save a lot of frustration everywhere

I would argue that this is much less of an issue, especially given there's like 4 things max you wanna plug in anyway, power button, power LED, maybe activity LED, and speaker ...maybe, and you only do this once per PC, and if you fuck up you're not breaking anything.

Even without a warranty, this is something that a good legal system would make them liable for. It's not like it was sold as-is with a warning.

You think there's no obligation here?

Warranty is irrelevant as the device is not a identical replacement and it did not fail, it operated as expected.

It clearly wasn’t for for purpose though, and the customer was lead to believe it was. Where to now?

No it does not operate as expect. Expectation is that with provided existing cable it will supply same voltage to same parts of connector.

They could have easily rectified this by shipping new cables with the PSU and having sufficient warnings in multiple places.

Depends on your legislation. In EU EVGA would be responsible for direct damage, i.e. the disks themselves. Indirect damage, such as loss of data, is not covered.

No, because warranty law isn't the only law at play. If you take an action that damages other people's stuff, you are usually liable in civil law. That includes shipping something that damages their stuff.

"Look, when you send your cell phone in for warranty repairs we may _occassionally_ send one back where the mainboard is replaced with thermite that will ignite the first time you connect it to a charger. If we do that without telling you, we're not liable for your house burning down because our warranty document says we don't cover that. Thanks for understanding. HTH HAND."

I'm sure that will totally fly in a court. Not one with real lawyers or jurists, but _a_ court.

This wasn't a mistake or freak accident. This was a reasonably foreseeable outcome of EVGA's decisions. They could have prevented it at multiple steps along the way. The only things the customer could have done to avoid this (i.e., replace the cables) they were directly advised not to do by EVGA.

Who could have prevent this happening, and how?

The end user could have prevented it by... not making use of the warranty he was entitled to? Ignoring EVGA's advice to keep his cables and instead replace them at his own expense without even knowing that the cables were in fact different?

EVGA could have prevented it by not sending him a PSU with a different pinout, by sending him the appropriate cables for the PSU he was sent, by providing a warning that the PSU was incompatible with previous cables and telling him to replace them, by...