Your motherboard forms the bedrock of your PC. It defines what your machine is capable of and underpins your system’s feature list: Everything from what processor you can run, what sort of memory it uses, to how many devices you can connect to it, as well as covering advanced features such as overclocking and quality integrated audio. Motherboards are important, basically.
While you’re unlikely to need to know what your motherboard is when looking at a new piece of software or a game’s system requirements, you will need this info when it comes to upgrading your system to meet those requirements. Whether you’re looking to boost your RAM, add a new SSD, or even know what your options are for graphics card upgrades, your motherboard’s make and model is going to be vital.
Even if you’ve built your PC yourself and have taken great pride and care in doing so, you may not necessarily remember which motherboard you ended up buying. And looking through your machine’s side window is rarely going to reveal the exact information you’re looking for.
The best way of finding out what motherboard you have is to turn to the various utilities that come with Windows itself or are small downloads that are also useful in other ways. There’s also the option of jumping into the UEFI BIOS as well, which will give you plenty of information on the motherboard, if you know how to get in there – frustratingly, knowing what motherboard you have can be vital to getting into the UEFI BIOS in the first place, but we’ll cover that shortly.
The easiest way to find out which motherboard you have is via the System Information tool, which ships with Windows by default. Hit the [Windows] + R keys to bring up the run command and type ‘msinfo32’ before hitting the OK button.
There is plenty of information here to go through, spread over many pages – System Information uses a Windows Explorer-like interface with ‘folders’ on the left-hand side and the all-important information being shown in the right-hand panel. The good news is that you don’t have to go far to find your motherboard info as it’s shown on the opening screen. Microsoft refers to your motherboard as the BaseBoard and the entries can be found about half-way down the page.
In this example the three important entries are the BaseBoard Manufacturer, BaseBoard Product, and the BaseBoard Version, which show that we have an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX Rev 1.xx motherboard. This page also reveals how much RAM is in the system, the processor’s make and model, as well as the version of Windows.
Once you’ve got the motherboard details, you can then look at your motherboard manufacturer’s website for detailed information about your hardware. It's worth doing from time to time to see if there are any BIOS updates that improve compatibility or solve issues that you may be experiencing.
If you’re looking for more information about your motherboard then there’s a third-party tool that is worth spending a bit of time with. CPU-Z is freeware, meaning you won’t have to spend a penny to use it, and it’s a tiny download as well, yet packs plenty of useful information on what is in your system. When it comes to your motherboard, it can tell you what BIOS version you’re running as well as the date for that update – very useful when looking for a new BIOS version.
Point your browser at www.cpuid.com and download CPU-Z. Unpack it to wherever is most useful and then run it to find out more about your system. You’ll find the information about your motherboard under the Mainboard tab, including the all-important Manufacturer and Model details. In this instance we’ve got the ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. and ROG MAXIMUS Z690 APEX.
Below these entries you’ll see what Chipset and Southbridge your motherboard is using. This can be useful info for older or more obscure motherboards, as this can reveal what CPU upgrades your motherboard supports. Thankfully most modern motherboards make life much easier on this front by stating what chipset they use in the name. Still worth knowing, though.
The last way to find out what motherboard you have, apart from pulling your machine apart to read what’s written on the thing itself, is via your UEFI BIOS Config. How you get into the UEFI BIOS depends on the motherboard itself, and some can be particularly tricky to enter in the small amount of time that they allow.
For the most part you should be able to enter the UEFI BIOS Configuration Utility by hitting either [DEL], [F2], or [F12]. Depending on how your machine is setup, it may even tell you which button to press as your machine starts to boot up, but this isn’t always the case. Some motherboards are so quick at booting that you don’t get a chance at all, and you must download an app that will restart the machine and enter the BIOS directly. Of course, to find such that app you’ll need to know what motherboard you have.
Once you do make it into your UEFI BIOS, you should find your motherboard information clearly displayed on the default page, usually using the EZ Mode settings (as opposed to Advanced Mode.) You can see from the example below that there’s a lot of information crammed into these pages though, so take your time to make sure you are reading everything correctly. You may also find that the motherboard details are hidden in the BIOS update page, so be prepared to dig a little.
Finding which motherboard you have inside your machine isn’t always the easiest thing to unearth, especially when compared to something like finding what CPU you have, but it’s good information to have access to, particularly if you’re looking to upgrade your system or trying to solve a problem. Happy hunting.
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