Yeah, those new risers definitely look better in quality (both in components and soldering) than some of the older ones.

Assuming those capacitors are in parallel, each one would share a portion of the current, thus making it easier on each individual capacitor. By the grouping it would appear they are in three banks, protecting three different sections of the circuit board, but without actually looking at one its hard to tell from just the picture. Assuming the the capacitor quality is equal or better than previous generations of these risers, I would think it would be a more reliable design and thus reduce the chance of shorting.

I also have never lost a GPU due to a riser going bad. I have had my share of bad risers, but never one causing any direct harm to the attached GPU or MB. In any case, the better quality on these new risers is much appreciated to help protect the newer more expensive GPUs.