The hashing changing with a different power supply thing someone pointed out is interesting: It's possible that the Monarchs are doing a more advanced version of what the Singles and Jallies did when they powered up: They would do sample jobs and such adjusting the clock frequency to find a perfect match within a speed band. That's why they always reported slightly different speeds with ZCX when powered on.
It sounds awesome that the unit adjusts to more power being available. With the Corsair TX850 the "550 GH" unit even has less HW errors AND more hashrate. And the downside is more heat and worse efficiency so user control over the max hashrate / clock speed would be a must have.
But what if I were to put an artificial load on the PSU when the Monarch boots up. Then the Monarch would sense the voltage droop / power loss and would adjust itself for a smaller hashrate and voltage. I still have an Ant S3 and that could work as an "artificial" load for the PSU during Monarch bootup. Just a wild thought, but it could work as a very stupid method to "underclock" the device...
I wish I had an answer for you on underclocking. Have you tried running the faster one off of BFGminer yet? You mentioned a speedup with CGminer on your 550, I'm curious if it will run slower and cooler and if there is as big a difference in speed on the 700.
Maybe I'll test both again with the custom BFG 4.2 on Windows. For science.
Well it sure ain't for profit! Mwhahahahaha. Tbh, I don't believe a word you say, your just another bfl employee still towing the line. Probably bcp19 talking to himself if you ask me