Is there any advantage to going the klipper route?
The advantages are innumerable of you are a tinkerer (it looks like you are). If you just want your printer to print stuff and that’s that, marlin is fine, but if you want to get serious about tuning and modifying your printer, Klipper is an inevitability.
Think about the QOL improvement that octoprint provided over running your SD card back and forth from PC to printer. Klipper is that x1000. Write macros to automate things like filament swaps, chamber heating, build plate clearing. Change every aspect of any behavior of the printer by modifying a .cfg file (rather than recompiling marlin firmware.bin files). There’s plugins for Cura to send your g-code directly to the printer (with octoprint you save the file to your PC then upload to octo, with Klipper there’s just a button in Cura to send directly to the printer and start printing).
In short, the only reason to use marlin is “it came on the printer and I don’t have the knowledge to set up Klipper”. Klipper is just better in every way. It’ll take you a couple hours to set up (you have a popular with lots of premade configurations available online), and from the moment you get it going, you’ll wonder what took you so long.
PM me if you have any questions.
Sounds like a plan!
If you have the time, check out a “intro to Klipper” video or something similar, just to get an idea of how useable it is, see if you’re interested. I’m here if you have any questions 👍🏽