[dfox]

Gamers and crypto miners do various nasty things to PCIe cards in order to use cheapest cable possible to extend it and actual hardware damage resulting from that seems pretty minimal.

[p0llard]

When I said "incompatible at the physical level" I meant it in the OSI sense of an issue at physical protocol level. An electrical specification mismatch could easily cause hardware damage (but would be very hard to achieve unless you were using your own PHY or literally connecting a power supply to the PCIe lines).

> seems pretty minimal

Is there actually any at all? I can't really see how this could lead to any damage.