System box was recently upgraded from 2u to 4u to allow for larger fans and radiator to provide significant increase in cooling capacity and reduced fan noise - 12cm fans are much quieter than 9cm fans.
Did no one actually read this? The chips don't even exist yet and the spec rollbacks are already happening. Now takes 2x the space.
I would prefer better cooling to a smaller case if given a choice.
How is that a spec rollback?
If someone was looking to rent an entire datacenter rack. They would get 25.2 TH per rack using HF and "only" 20 TH per rack using Cointerra. The older spec would have been 42 TH per rack.
Generally hosting is charged by the KW and not by the space it consumes so ther would be no difference in cost for requiring more rack space
Also the more important Criteria is cooling. Generally there is a limit of 8-10 kW per rack and usually it's less than 10 KW per rack. Few data centers allow more. Thus you will be sparsely populating these Bitcoin mining equipment on the racks with plenty of air in between regardless of 2U or 4U box size so in practice it would take the same amount of rack apace regardless of box size. And cooling these power hungry chips is very important cos they're temperature sensitive and run faster when they're cooler.
Then why didn't they think of that in the first place?
Its like promising a 4x4 then deciding you dont need rear wheel drive and just saying "here is your 2x4, its better I promise".