Whether or not those fears are well-founded is beside the point. I know that components will undergo a safe thermal shutdown. I know that power cables mostly ca

Whether or not those fears are well-founded is beside the point. I know that components will undergo a safe thermal shutdown. I know that power cables mostly can't go anywhere they shouldn't go. And I still get anxiety around it, even as a person who doesn't get much anxiety. Expecting a nontechnical novice to feel comfortable doing these things is asking a lot. Plus, there's still a lot that actually can go wrong. Crappy PSUs and built up static electricity have killed uncountable motherboards and GPUs. Misconfiguring your BIOS can actually kill your components, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.