Board recommendations for Newbie

I’ve been hesitating on pulling the trigger on a Primo kit because the boards are always out of stock, but now I’m itching pretty bad to get one going and have some projects lined up. I’ve been running a 3d Printer for about a year and half now (Ender 3) and have that pretty figured out. I’ve flashed to Marlin firmware and other things along that line, so I think I’d be ok buying a board and flashing firmware. Trying to figure out what board to buy has my head spinning a little bit, so hoping to get some good recommendations from others who have done it. Thanks!

You can find an Arduino Mega + RAMPS board for $20-40 on Amazon including stepper drivers, which is still what I use. When I fried my first Arduino board, I didn’t shed a tear. That my recommendation for a newbie. Once your needs change, spring for a 32-bit board.

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That sounds like a pretty good plan. So what would I be lacking with the mega setup vs. a 32bit board?

I don’t mind other opinions, but the ramps were the standard here for a long time and we dealt with a bunch of problems. Yes. They are cheap to replace, but they break often enough that they don’t end up saving much money and the investigation time ruins it.

The rambo is still king. They are built like tanks. They cost more, but they are hard to break.

The skr pro is the prince. We are still learning its failure modes. But it has a lot of good features. The best is that upgrading the firmware is just putting a file on the sd card, as long as you want the standard firmware.

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This looks to be the exact board that would normally come as an option on the package correct? Then I could just upload firmware via SD card? https://www.biqu.equipment/products/bigtreetech-skr-pro-v1-1-32-bit-control-board?variant=29207393140834

Yes, that looks right. Make sure you get the 2209 drivers.