Search for "System Information" in the start menu and open it. The motherboard should be under "BaseBoard Product". More on reddit.com

Okay. So first part. The PCIe explains that each chip supports different amounts of lanes at 4.0 spec. The 7000-series being the best with 16. Those will also give better performance since the 8000 has less compute power. The M.2 numbers are dimensions. So you can use NVMe, but you’ll need to look at specs to make sure the drive is either 80mm or 110mm in length to fit the provided standoffs. Most NVMe drives I’ve worked with including Samsung 970, 980 and 990 are 80. Hope this helps. More on reddit.com

I'm just going to go down the Newegg advanced search setup. CPU socket type: Pretty important. Make sure this matches the CPU you want. Also, in my experience, it's not worth it to skimp here. A CPU upgrade is pretty simple, and usually if you have an old CPU socket, you have an old motherboard. North Bridge: This is what goes between the CPU and the RAM. These are divided up by chipsets, so you can go look up other motherboards with the same Northbridge and look at their reviews. FSB: Front Side Bus. This is how fast the CPU can communicate with the RAM and the rest of the computer. PCI Express 2.0 x16: Mostly used for video cards. Get at least one. Two if you want to do SLI/Crossfire/whatever with two video cards. Memory Slots: Another place that can make it easy to come back later and upgrade. Memory Standard. This is mostly about how fast the RAM is, but it also relates to other things. I got screwed a few years back because I had DDR when everybody went to DDR2. The older, slower RAM was actually more expensive and it sucked. Pata: Parallel ATA. Old ass stuff, don't worry about it. Also known as IDE SATA 3Gb/s: Serial ATA. Mid-range hard-drive access speed. It's good enough because a regular hard-drive is going to be too slow to notice a difference here. But since SATA 3GB/s-6GB/S is cross compatible, you might as well get the faster one. SATA 6Gb/s: Get these. Get at least 2, but 5 seems to be the most popular on Newegg. SATA raid: Do you plan on RAIDing your SATA drives? If you don't know what it is, you probably weren't planning on doing it. But you should research it because it is something handy to know. It is good for providing redundancy on your drives, or making the access time faster. It will typically require twice as many drives to get the GeeBee's you want, so it's only if you are doing something important or have an excess of money. Windows Vista: bullshit, ignore PCI Express x16: It's for peripherals. I don't know how common it really is, because most video cards are PCI-E x2, and most NIC's are PCI. Haven't looked into it in a while so things might have changed. PCI Slots: Any motherboard will come with enough of these. It's mostly for if you want to add extra network interfaces to your computer. Also if you are very picky with the audio quality, you can get a fancier sound card for your computer and plug it in here. HDMI: This only applies if you have onboard video eSATA: Imagine very fast external flash drives. That are expensive. Onboard Video Chipset: If you plan on doing any gaming, you probably don't care for onboard video, but it's not bad to have in case there are any problems with your main video card. IEEE1394: Firewire Form Factor: How big is the motherboard, where are the screws, what power supply does it need. Like fireflash said, unless you have need for a small case, or something special, you might as well get a full ATX Motherboard. These will usually have more PCI slots, more DIMM (another name for memory slots), more room for that big ass-heatsink you bought, etc. PCI-express: Smaller, faster PCI slots. I haven't ever seen anything that uses them, but I heard from a rabidhummingbird that they can be used for plugging in TV-tuners. If anybody has something to add/subtract/revise, please comment below. More on reddit.com

I went https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6HkH99/asrock-x870e-taichi-eatx-am5-motherboard-x870e-taichi under Products/Motherboards to get more information. To be clear about my intent of this post, it is about this newbie learning how to read specifications about motherboards more than the specs ... More on pcpartpicker.com