Ask HN: Does a Motherboard Ever Store Data while booting or running?

Your BIOS/EFI knows which drive to boot from, time and date, etc.

What kind of data are you looking at?

I’m thinking of ordering a motherboard from eBay, and similar to when one orders a used HDD, they might erase the drive or have security concerns from buying used drives because data can persist in firmware or controllers.

In that same vein I was curious if the motherboard stores data even if just for basic configs, and it sounds like it does. Is it persistent data? That would be my second question.

Most websites and academic sources and even stupid talking heads say “the motherboard is just a connector, no more!” But that’s clearly not the case.

There’s usually a battery and sometimes a jumper on the board to reset settings

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