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?
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...
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.
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?