Powering a graphics card

[Demonicpenguin]

Watching several videos of Linus plugging in a graphics card, I see him using a single cable coming from the PSU. Using the two heads, 8-pin and 6-pin(or maybe 2 8's or 2 6's hard to tell) for example on the same cable. Typically that is used for powering a SLI card to my knowledge. In the past I did the same thing and managed to fry the card. Is it a special type of cable? Did something else go wrong when I hooked it up?

 

Sidenote: This was forever ago no longer have/care about the card just looking for details.

[Tam3n]

Higher end PSUs can come with thicker PCIe power cables that have two 6+2 connectors at the end, to reduce the amount of cabling needed. Generally it should not be a problem to use these, unless you plan to heavily overclock a high end graphics card. The problems that can arise, is heating of the cable and voltage drop (that should be twice as much compared to using dual cables) from 12 V as the current increases. Cheap PSUs could get one of their rails overloaded, but they should not come with cables like this in the first place. Just refrain from using aftermarket adapters and you should be good...