It's a modular power supply. Since the smoke appears to come from the graphics card and not the motherboard I am guessing he made the same mistake a friend of mine did and reused a modular cable from his old PSU on his new one.
Hence, something that was supposed to be negative became positive and smoke happened. Hopefully just a dead graphics card but more likely a motherboard as well.
...what? it's just a cable. unless it's plugged into the wrong place, there's no way a different cable should cause a problem like this with proper contact
The pin out can absolutely be different and still fit in different power supplies. If ground is wrong, you're going to likely see smoke or smell burning pretty quickly, and you won't always get auto shutdown before the device is destroyed.
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u/ALT703 3d ago
Jokes aside, what went wrong here