How to identify the motherboard
Your needs have changed over time and, right now, you need far more performance than your current computer can provide. Your usual computer friend has offered to choose and install the necessary parts for you but, before buying anything, he asked you the model of the motherboard installed on your computer, in order to avoid incompatibility problems. Unfortunately, this is information that you do not have and that is why you are here on my website in the hope that I can help you obtain it.
The motherboard (also called motherboard or mainboard) is a fundamental element of the computer. It houses the processor, RAM and other very important components that allow the PC to function properly: its name does not lie, in short! But now let’s get to the gist of the matter and find out together how to identify the motherboard of a computer without having to put your hand to the toolbox and physically disassemble it.
I assure you that this is a much simpler procedure than you imagine. All you have to do is take five minutes of free time and try to put into practice the instructions I am about to give you: it involves using some utilities present “standard” on the computer or, if the information is not sufficient, using a third party software suitable for the purpose. Ready to get started? All right, let’s go! I wish you a good read.
Index
- How to identify the motherboard of the Windows PC
- Windows PowerShell
- Command Prompt
- Windows System Information
- CPU-Z
- How to identify the motherboard of the Mac
How to identify the motherboard of the Windows PC
If you are interested in identifying the motherboard of your Windows PC , you have several ways to go: use the command line using the integrated “standard” utilities, or use a special software for recognizing the peripherals installed. Find everything explained below.
Windows PowerShell
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most practical and immediate method to trace the motherboard model installed on an animated Windows computer involves the use of PowerShell , that is the new generation command line introduced starting from Windows 10 (but also available in older editions of the operating system).
For the purposes of this guide, it is recommended to start a PowerShell window with administrative privileges, to avoid permissions problems: to do this, right-click on the Windows Start menu (the flag symbol located on the left edge of the taskbar ), select the item Windows PowerShell (administrator) from the menu that appears and click on the Yes button , to authorize its start.
Alternatively, open the Start menu , type the word powershell in it, right-click on the first result received and select Run as administrator from the menu that appears; therefore confirm that you want to open the utility with elevated privileges, by clicking on the Yes button .
Now, type the command wmic baseboard get product,manufacturer,version,serialnumberin the window that opens, press the Enter key on the keyboard and wait a few moments, so that you will be shown the manufacturer of the motherboard, the model and the serial number of the same.
Command Prompt
Another tool you can use to get your motherboard manufacturer and model immediately is the Windows Command Prompt . Also in this case, to be able to trace the information sought, it is essential to run the utility with administrator privileges.
To proceed, therefore, open the Windows Start menu , type the word cmd in it and locate the result relating to the Command Prompt ; now, right-click on it, choose Run as administrator from the menu that appears and click on the Yes button to start the utility.
Once in the Command Prompt window , issue the command wmic baseboard get product,manufacturer,version,serialnumber /format:list(a variant of the command already seen for PowerShell) and press the Enter key on the keyboard, in order to display, in a sort of table, the manufacturer, the model and the serial number of the motherboard.
Windows System Information
If you prefer to avoid using the command line, you can also retrieve basic information about the motherboard installed in your computer using System Information , a tool present in practically all editions of Windows and containing information about all the peripherals installed in the computer. computer (but not only).
To use it, press the key combination Win + R on your keyboard, type the command msinfo32in the small panel that appears on the screen and press the Enter key (or click on the OK button ), in order to start the utility in question.
When this happens, click on the item System resources visible at the top of the left sidebar and take a look at what appears in correspondence with the headings Base board manufacturer and Base board product , to trace the manufacturer and specific model of the motherboard in use. Also through the same window, you can also view information about the version of the BIOS / UEFI system installed ( BIOS version / date ), the processor and the amount of physical and virtual RAM available.
CPU-Z
If the solutions I have reported to you just now have not been useful to your needs, since you need more detailed information about the motherboard installed on your computer (e.g. the type of PCI bus that can be used and its speed, much more to name a few), you can rely on one of the numerous programs to view the computer hardware , among which CPU-Z certainly stands out .
If you have never heard of it, it is a completely free program, which allows you to obtain numerous details about the hardware of the computer on which it runs, including those related to the motherboard.
To get it, connected to the home page of the software , click on the ZIP • English button for the Portable version (which does not require installation to work), then on the Download Now! and, once you have obtained the .zip package containing the program, extract it to a folder of your choice and run the cpuz_x64.exe file , if you are using 64-bit Windows, or cpuz_x32.exe , if you are using 32-bit Windows (if you don’t know what to choose, this guide of mine may be useful to you , to understand the precise architecture of the operating system you are using).
Now, after opening the program, click on the Yes button to authorize its execution and wait a few moments for the configuration of your computer to be analyzed; then click on the Mainboard tab to obtain information on the manufacturer of the motherboard, on the chipset and on the graphics bus present ( Motherboard section ), those on the BIOS / UEFI version installed ( BIOS section ) and those relating to the bus of the video card in use ( Graphic Interface ).
If you wish, you can save the information visible in CPU-Z in an HTML or TXT file , by clicking on the down arrow located next to the Tools button (at the bottom of the screen) and selecting the Save report as .TXT item or Save report as .HTML from the menu that appears immediately after.
How to identify the motherboard of the Mac
As for Macs , alas, I don’t have very good news to give you: Apple, for specific company policy, tends not to make public the details of the individual hardware components in use in its devices. For this reason, there are no integrated tools or third-party software that allow you to trace information of this kind – at least at the time of writing this guide.
However, you can use a little “trick”, which consists in locating the serial number of the computer and using a specific website to try to locate valuable information about it: it is a method that works for certain models of Mac mini, iMac and MacBook, not for everyone, but it’s worth a try.
So, after turning on the Mac and logging in, click on the Apple menu located at the top left (the symbol of the bitten apple ), select the item About this Mac from the menu that appears and click on the Overview tab , located in the window that appears.
Now, with the help of the mouse, highlight the sequence of numbers and letters indicated in correspondence with the Serial number item and copy it, pressing the combination of keys cmd + c or right-clicking with the mouse on the selection and choosing the Copy item from the context menu that appears.
Once this is done, connected to this website , enter the serial number identified previously in the Serial number text field and click on the Submit button to receive, a little further down, all the available information relating to the hardware present on the Mac in question. With a bit of luck, you may be able to trace the specs of your motherboard.
Please note that the Internet page I mentioned earlier has a limit of 10 searches per month for each IP address; if, for some reason, you exceed this limit or are unable to use the portal in question, you can use the search engine by serial number on the Everymac site, which works in a rather similar way.