Whether you need to update drivers, want to check hardware compatibility, or you’re just curious, it’s way easier to check your motherboard model number with these simple tricks than it is to crack open your computer case to check the board itself. Read on as we show you how to check your motherboard model number from the comfort of your keyboard.
Why Do I Want To Do This?
There are a variety of situations where knowing your motherboard’s model number is important: upgrading your drivers, buying new hardware (you’ll need the proper expansion slots for card-based upgrades and the right memory DIMMS for memory upgrades, etc.), and checking the capabilities of your board if you’re considering upgrading the entire thing.
If you kept the paperwork that came with your computer (or the individual components if you built it yourself) you can often times reference that. Even then, it’s best to check to make sure the documentation is correct. Rather than open the case and search for the model number, it’s easy to use tools within Windows to check things out.
Checking Your Model Number via CMD.exe
If you’re comfortable using the command line, you can easily check a variety of motherboard and hardware stats using the handy Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) a command-line interface for Microsoft’s powerful WMI tool.
With the WMIC we can entry the query
baseboard to check motherboard stats and then additional specific query modifiers like get Manufacturer, Model, Name, PartNumber, slotlayout, serialnumber, poweredon to get more detailed information about the motherboard. Let’s check our motherboard’s manufacturer, model number, and serial number using WMIC.
Open up the command prompt in Windows via either the run dialog (WIN+R) or via the search in the start menu; enter cmd.exe into either, no need to run it as an administrator. Enter the following text at the command line.
wmic baseboard get product,Manufacturer,version,serialnumber
This will return the following data.
The above information checks out for our system: the manufacturer is MSI, the board is the Z87-G45 (MS-7821), and while the WMIC tool attempted to check the serial number apparently, alas, MSI left that particular bit unfilled for whatever reason. None the less, the WMIC tool functioned just as it should, and without opening the case or using any third party tools we have the basic information we’re looking for.
Checking Your Model Number via Speccy
If you’d prefer a GUI-based way to check your motherboard’s model number (as well as a method that yields more information at a glance than the WMIC tool), the free tool Speccy by Piriform (the folks that brought us CCleaner) is a handy app to have around.
Grab a free download here and then fire it up.
Not only will it tell your model number, as seen above, but if you click on the Motherboard entry in the left hand navigation column, you can check even more information about the motherboard like the chipset and voltage settings.
Have a pressing tech question, hardware releated or otherwise? Shoot us an email at ask@howtogeek.com and we’ll do our best to answer it.
