Intel Motherboards - What's the equivalent to GPIO3 Force Power setting

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What's the equivalent to GPIO3 Force Power setting

Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=9795
Printed Date: 07 Aug 2025 at 7:34am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: What's the equivalent to GPIO3 Force Power setting

Posted By: jyavenard
Subject: What's the equivalent to GPIO3 Force Power setting
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2018 at 4:33pm

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Attempting to get a Gigabyte Thunderbolt Titan Ridge card to work with an ASRock X299 Professional Gaming i9 XE motherboard. Running latest BIOS 1.50

People have got it to work with other brand motherboard (Asus, Gigabyte and Supermicro) by setting the "GPIO3 Force Pwr" to true in their BIOS.

The ASRock doesn't have such option. Would there be an alternative or method to set that setting on?

Patching the BIOS maybe?

Thanks

Replies:

Posted By: Karatekid430
Date Posted: 26 Oct 2018 at 12:12pm

Hello,

I know that ALL BIOS images with Thunderbolt support that I have analysed contain the force GPIO setting but many have it hidden from view. I know exactly how to set it.

1. Download latest BIOS and install it
2. Open same BIOS with UEFITool and extract the setup section
3. Open this with IFR Extractor
4. Grep through the outputted text file and find the setting with its hexadecimal offset
5. Put an EFI shell on a USB and boot from it
6. Run command setup_var <offset> <desired value>
7. Reboot. It will persist indefinitely until CMOS cleared

Sorry but I do not have time to be more verbose. For each of those steps you will have to figure out the specifics. Everything I know about this came from the internet from BIOS modding forums. So you can find it.

Find the post on eGPU.io "List of Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 Devices" where I am active. I have shown how to physically short two pins on the GPIO header to force power. Make an account and post there and you will get more help than you ever will here. I have dealt with Asrock and their sure fire response is just to cease responding to technical support queries. When I have more time I can be more verbose about IFR extraction if you insist on overriding the BIOS.

Best of luck!

Regards,

Karatekid430

Posted By: jyavenard
Date Posted: 28 Oct 2018 at 1:36am

Thanks for your answer.

Yes, I've followed your thread on egpu.io with interest.

In the end, I removed the Titan Ridge and put back the Alpine Ridge, my issue was getting my Apple Thunderbolt Display to work, and it doesn't with the Titan Ridge.

The gpio thing was me trying different thing, after reading that for someone it allowed the card to work consistently on their machine. I believe it was a red herring.