I used OWC extensively from the 90s to early 2010s, and was quite happy with their products. I also used SoftRAID prior to switching to APFS. OWC used to sell hardware-based RAID, at some point I don't know what happened, whether OWC acquired SoftRAID or did a JV with them, but in my personal subjective opinion OWC's engineering has gone from excellent -- if over-priced, but simple for most Mac users -- to mediocre at best.
I still have many of their drives, enclosures, etc, but have no plans to ever buy anything substantial from them moving forward. The last product I purchased was their latest Thuderbolt 3 dock for an iMac Pro. It's... mediocre, and kinda, sorta, mostly works a lot of the time, as long as you don't actually load up the ports. Is it adequate? Yes. Does it function according to the marketed specs? No. CalDigit is much better, but has its own problems for some people.
(Google above or read Amazon / BH Photo reviews and find many endless threads on same topic.)
Lloyd at MacPerformanceGuide is a big champion of OWC because he has a business relationship with them and their products, but here's his rant on SoftRAID and Catalina experiences:
I've been using Sonnet for about as long as OWC. For me, personally, I'd rate their hardware as phenomenal and their engineering as consistently excellent.
I would never buy this thing:
The ultimate performance drive for Mac Pro and PC towers. Achieve speeds over 6,000MB/s, and store up to 8TB of high-resolution footage, photos, and games.
eshop.macsales.com
I got this:
Had I gone with something else, it would've been a Highpoint or Amfeltec card. I'm on a 2019 Mac Pro, so your choice may be slightly different with the old school Cheesegrater. I was running a Highpoint card in 2010 Cheesegrater.
With external RAID enclosures I've had no problems with the Pegasus R6, on the flipside I never install the drivers, I just plug it in. Installing the Promise Utility seems to produce its own series of issues when combined with Catalina and Adobe apps at present.
...
You milage may vary. OWC isn't terrible, they have various bits and pieces that are really handy. But they're basically one-stop-shopping for people who don't know anything except they want to upgrade their Mac.
384GB RAM from OWC: $2.3K. Actual RAM is Hynix, Micron, Samsung or whatever they could order in bulk cheaply that month, with an OWC sticker on it.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/2933R3M384/
384GB RAM from memory.net: I paid $1.5K -- seems to have climbed to $1.7K
Get ➡️ Lifetime warranty ✅ Great savings ✅ Buy factory original M393A4K40CB2-CVF - Samsung 1x 32GB DDR4-2933 RDIMM PC4-23466U-R Dual Rank x4 Modules @Memory.NET!
memory.net
My point with above is- why do you want to donate an extra $800 to OWC to receive their sticker over random 3rd party RAM? Answer: because you don't know any better. Which is a good summary of their entire product line and business model (in my opinion as of 2020).
