Edit: Stop defending stupid, ugly designs. No thought went into this. Zero. If a 2U solution was possible, a 4U solution is monstrously wasteful.
Unless their 2U solution was nothing but a bluff.
there's lots of reasons why a 4U was more appropriate in this example than the 2U.
the two obvious ones are, cooling... and power supplies.
1. cooling. a 4U allowed them to use three independent radiators - with 12cm fans. had they stuck with 2U, they wouldve had a smaller radiator, and smaller fans... which wouldve been much less cooling capacity (and noisier... have you ever heard 6cm fans!?)
2. power. theyve gone for twin seasonic atx psus. these are excellent power supplies... and presumably, well priced... but bulky. In 2U, achieving the power required, and hitting the pricepoint, wouldnt been very difficult.
for those two reasons alone, the switch from 2U to 4U makes sense.
Could it have fitted in a 3U instead of a 4U...? Maybe... but i bet their suppliers already had a 4U raring to go, which wouldve saved time and, as we all know all too well... bitcoin time, is money!
You're missing the point. They more than doubled the space inside the cabinet (read double the rackspace/moar monyz to host) and &still& arrived at a botched design. I'm not saying it will not hash, simply that it is less efficient, bulkier, needlessly complex & due to higher internal temps, more failure-prone. There's nothing to debate here -- the cooling system, considering its expense & complexity, is a total joke. If a kid designed it, i would try to help, but this was done by adults, PROFESSIONALS FFS!
Edit: As far as "their supplier had it" -- i suspect Seasonic gave them a killer deal on the 750W jobs, and they took it. Works for the BJ, 2 for this one, and a huge quantity deal. Nothing to do with finer points of design.