I've spent at least $5000 on aliexpress over the past few years, maybe more. I've never had an issue that wasn't resolved with a refund or a replacement. They're pretty reliable and I'd recommend them to anyone. They stock a wide variety of components and parts if you're building electronics or just general DIY / 3d printing / home stuff.
Temu feels way more sketchy. They try to shove more stuff down your throat, and they even have little mini games where you can try to earn free things. They're way more about just pushing cheap shit. I tried them once, felt dirty and have never gone back.
It seems wrong to compare the price of a fully assembled bambu against a prusa kit. Especially for a farm, you want to pull it out and print.
Have you tried the mmu? It wasn't great. Mine's collecting dust. The xl didn't get good reviews when it launched, I'm not sure how the sl is doing.
I'm not saying prusa don't make awesome printers, but their first gen tends need more refinement. I've owned a few creality but my mk3 was my favorite printer until the x1c.
And yeah totally agree the voron would be for a fun thing, not a print farm.
So pricey, and their core xy just came out. Prusa doesn't have the best track record with their initial releases.
I love my mk3 but I wouldn't buy a prusa right now.
I'm In a similar boat to op, I don't feel there's a good solution right now. The creality k2+ and qidi plus 4 are worth looking at, but they're also fairly new and not well proven yet.
I'm tempted to take the plunge and finally build a voron 2.4
Just to sanity check cause sometimes it's easy to overlook the obvious - Did you plug in all the power cables? The extra CPU connectors on the mobo, and the gpu?
I've had mine for about 4 years now, I love it.
I've had the inside screen replaced once now under extended warranty. I'd still buy another folding.