I’ve learned in the last 24 hours that OWC must not stress test their Thunderbolt 10GbE adapters. Use case: copying 15TB over the network.

An OWC Helios w/ 10Gb card lasted for only 15-30 minutes saturating the link before it overheats and kernel panics (tested on both an M1 Max and Intel MBP).

The OWC Thunderbolt Pro Dock (latest rev) fared better, and lasted 5-6 hours before it overheated and reset itself, dropping all network connections. 

Next up: Internal 10GbE NIC on a 2018 Mac Mini.