cableelectric-shockmotherboardpower
Because of a broken power button on the front of my computer I've had to take the cables connected to the button and create a sort of "hotwire" setup to start my computer. This is done by simply pressing the ground and power switch cables against each other, and having those cables loosly taped to the outside of my case.
Could these cables contain any dangerous amount of electricity, if a person or cat would accidentally touch them?
Typically the wires for the case front-panel I/O have just 1-pin or 2-pin (female) housings. This allows complete flexibility in making the proper connections to the motherboard (male) header. You seem to imply that computer case came with a single 2x5 housing with one of the 10 positions blocked off (it's called a key), and the wire positions do not match up with the motherboard header assignments.
The simple solution is to reposition the pins/wires in the 2x5 housing. Each female pin should be carefully extracted from the housing by gently depressing the exposed retention tab. After all nine wires/pins are extracted, then re-insert the wires/pins back into the housing but in the needed positions. If you smashed the retention tab too far down and the pin can now be pulled out of the housing, then you will need to bend the tab back up.
Here's what the female pins look like with a 1x4-position housing:
I call it a power discharge, removes remaining power from everything like capacitors giving a full reset of everything. It's fixed some wacky things here too, I don't fully understand it TBH. Furthermore I worked for HP & lvl2 didn't even have a better answer then the above. So suffice to say the 3 big names all do it so its not some unique proprietary thing. Some links:
Best Answer
The power switch provides an active low input to a logic gate within the power supply circuit.
This provides a low current logic low (ground) gate pulse to a BJT transistor biased to an isolated 5V source with the maximum current likely much less than 10mA. This portion of the circuit is also electrically isolated from the rest of the power supply circuit as can be seen in the diagram.
So to answer your question, No there are no dangerous voltages present.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_unit_(computer)