Sooner or later you will need to know the manufacturer and exact model of your motherboard, especially if you plan to upgrade your computer, since the upgrade capabilities of your computer are set by the motherboard model you have. You will require this information if you perform a BIOS upgrade or download your motherboard manual or drivers. A BIOS upgrade is needed to make your computer recognize a new CPU, and the manual is necessary if you want to check how much RAM your computer is able to recognize or which CPUs it supports, for example.

Finding out this information is not particularly easy, because many manufacturers don’t print their name or the model name on the motherboard. Also, you may want to check if the motherboard installed in your PC is really the model you ordered. Usually, the warranty is void if you open your computer, so you will need to discover how to learn this information without opening your PC.

How is it possible to know the motherboard manufacturer through software? Inside the computer BIOS there is a serial number, which includes a code for the manufacturer. So, a hardware identification utility reads the BIOS serial number and deciphers it for you. Read our tutorial “Deciphering the BIOS Serial Number” for a detailed explanation on this subject.

We will teach you how to use four very popular hardware identification programs to find out the manufacturer and model of your motherboard: CPU-Z, Sandra Lite, AIDA64, and HWiNFO.

After you find out your motherboard manufacturer and model, you may want to know what the manufacturer’s website is and where you can download the latest BIOS, drivers, and manual for your motherboard model. This can be found at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/page/drivers_motherboard.