DMI data on consumer hardware

Desktop Management Interface - DMI is a standard for exposing base data about the system (hardware) to the running software. Usually you'd get the manufacturer name, etc. 

At least in theory.

On typical consumer hardware (like my Zotac board), you instead get this:

$ dmidecode
...
Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
Base Board Information
        Manufacturer: To be filled by O.E.M.
        Product Name: To be filled by O.E.M.
        Version: To be filled by O.E.M.
        Serial Number: To be filled by O.E.M.
        Asset Tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.

...

I don't need to say that there is no way of finding out what hardware you've actually got from this info.