Bumping this for new developments.
I've gone ahead and changed the max avatar size to where I feel it should have been all along. I didn't add any height, but the avatar width can now take up all of the available space of the user info section without pushing it wider.
So max height stays at 100 pixels, but max width has gone from 120 to 180 pixels. I've tested it, and it won't make the user info section wider, but it does fill the space.
The max file size went up a little from 25k to 30k as well.