How to Check Your Motherboard Model (Five Ways, Including Remotely)

Updated: October 2026

A driver download, a BIOS update and a RAM upgrade all start with the same question: which board is in this PC? Windows knows the answer, but it keeps it in a few places and labels it differently in each. Here's how to check the motherboard model five ways, from one window at the desk to a script that reads a whole fleet.

Five Ways to Check, at a Glance

Pick the method by where you are and what state the PC is in. A PC that boots gives you the answer in seconds. A PC that doesn't still has it in firmware and on the board itself.

1. System Information (msinfo32)

Press Win+R, type msinfo32 and press Enter. System Summary opens on the first screen. Look for three lines: BaseBoard Manufacturer, BaseBoard Product and BaseBoard Version.

BaseBoard Product is the model. BaseBoard Version is the board revision, and it matters more than it looks. Some vendors publish a different BIOS file for each revision of the same board.

Don't mix it up with the System Model line higher up. On a custom-built PC it often repeats the board name or shows a placeholder. On a Dell, HP or Lenovo PC it shows the PC model, which is the name the vendor's support site wants.

Micro Center's tech support team walks through the same System Information route on Windows 11 in under two minutes:

2. PowerShell: Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard

PowerShell gives you the same data as text you can paste into a ticket:

powershell
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_BaseBoard | Select-Object Manufacturer, Product, Version, SerialNumber

Microsoft documents the Product property as the "baseboard part number defined by the manufacturer", read from the SMBIOS table the firmware publishes. On a retail board, that's the model name you search for. On a branded PC, it's often an internal part number that means nothing outside the vendor.

For the PC model and the serial, add two more lines:

powershell
Get-CimInstance Win32_ComputerSystem | Select-Object Manufacturer, Model
Get-CimInstance Win32_BIOS | Select-Object SerialNumber, SMBIOSBIOSVersion

Older guides use wmic baseboard get product,manufacturer. That command is gone. Microsoft's list of deprecated features, updated in September 2026, says WMIC is removed and no longer available as a Feature on Demand on Windows 11, version 24H2 and later. WMI itself stays, and Get-CimInstance is the replacement.

The August 2026 updates caught plenty of old scripts. The top reply in this r/sysadmin thread gives the fix in one line: use Get-CimInstance.

More one-liners like these live in our list of PowerShell commands, sorted by the ticket you're on.

3. Check the BIOS or UEFI Setup Screen

When Windows won't start, the firmware still knows the answer. Restart and press the setup key the boot screen shows, usually Del or F2. The main or information page lists the board or system model and the BIOS version.

If Windows does start, you can skip the key timing. Go to Settings, System, Recovery, then Restart now next to Advanced startup. Pick Troubleshoot, Advanced options, then UEFI Firmware Settings.

Note the BIOS version while you're there. It's the second thing you'll need if the job is a BIOS update.

4. Read the Label on the Board

The label is the last resort, and the one that works when every piece of software comes back blank. Shut down, unplug the power and open the case. Touch a grounded metal part before you touch anything else.

Retail boards print the model on the circuit board, often between the PCIe slots or next to the RAM slots, with a revision like REV 1.02 nearby. Laptops and mini PCs are harder. Their boards often carry only part numbers and a vendor code. Photograph whatever you find and attach it to the device record, so the next tech doesn't open the case again.

When Windows Says "Default String"

Not every board fills in its SMBIOS fields. White-box and embedded PCs often ship with placeholders like "Default string" or "To be filled by O.E.M." in every field. No tool can read a model the firmware never wrote down.

This r/techsupport thread is the textbook case. A company's smart-board mini PC showed "Default Strings everywhere" in System Information, CMD and PowerShell, and the board itself carried three codes nobody could look up.

For a branded PC, stop hunting for the board. Dell, HP and Lenovo publish drivers and BIOS files by PC model and serial number, not by board part number. Read the Model from Win32_ComputerSystem and the SerialNumber from Win32_BIOS, which is the service tag on a Dell, and enter it on the vendor's support site.

For an embedded device like the one in that thread, the device vendor or its reseller is the only source of firmware. A generic BIOS for a similar-looking board can brick it.

Linux and macOS

On Linux, dmidecode reads the same SMBIOS table. sudo dmidecode -t baseboard prints the whole board record, and sudo dmidecode -s baseboard-product-name prints only the model. Without root, cat /sys/class/dmi/id/board_vendor /sys/class/dmi/id/board_name gives the same two fields on most distributions.

Apple doesn't expose a board model. The Mac's model name and serial number, under the Apple menu in About This Mac, are what Apple's support and parts lookups use.

5. Check Every Motherboard Across a Fleet

One PC is a lookup. Fifty is an inventory job, and it's worth doing before the next driver or firmware rollout. This reads every PC in a text file and writes one row per board:

powershell
$pcs = Get-Content .\computers.txt
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_BaseBoard -ComputerName $pcs |
  Select-Object PSComputerName, Manufacturer, Product, Version |
  Export-Csv .\baseboards.csv -NoTypeInformation

With the ComputerName parameter, Get-CimInstance opens a temporary WSMan session to each PC, so the targets need WinRM enabled and reachable. Our WinRM guide covers the setup. Run the same query against Win32_BIOS to add the BIOS version, and you have a list of boards that are behind on firmware.

Sort the CSV by Product and you have the board families you support. Rows that say "Default string" or come back empty are your white-box and embedded devices, and those are the ones to label by hand. Where the same Product shows two different Versions, the PCs need revision-specific BIOS files, so don't push one file to all of them.

The board model also tells you the motherboard chipset, which decides what the board supports. That's often the real question behind "which board is this".

Laptops off the office network won't answer a WinRM query. An agent-based inventory will. OpenFrame can run the same query as a script across a client's devices and collect the output, so the board list comes back as one table.

The Short Version

Use msinfo32 at the desk and Get-CimInstance for anything you'll paste or script, since WMIC is gone from current Windows 11. Use the firmware screen when Windows is down and the board label when every tool says "Default string". On a Dell, HP or Lenovo PC, skip the board and use the PC model and serial.

Next, find out what the chip next to the CPU socket does in our guide to the platform controller hub.