Does the Precision T3600 support Xeon Ivy Bridge processors?

No.

Intel® Xeon® processor E5-1600 or E5-2600 family Only.

http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites/channel/Documents/Precision_T3600_Spec_Sheet_May2012_English.pdf

  Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors use a 32 nanometer based manufacturing process, CPU on planar double-gate transistors. They fall under the tock process of Intel’s tick-tock model of development and included a microarchitecture (codenamed Sandy Bridge) to replace the Intel Xeon 5500 series processors that were built on the architecture code named Nehalem.

Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors (codenamed Ivy Bridge) are based on the 22  nanometer manufacturing process. There is a die shrink, known as the "tick" step of Intel’s tick-tock model and is based on 3D tri-gate transistors.

I was wondering the same. It's obviously not supported at the moment but from what I've read, it would work as long as the BIOS didn't specifically reject the new CPU because it wouldn't recognize the microcode. Anyone tried it yet?

That's not the answer I hoped for, but good to know. Thanks for testing and sharing your findings.

The 32nm vs 22nm manufacturing process should not impact the processor working in the LGA2011 slot on this workstation. I upgraded an HP workstation similar to the T3600 from an E5-1600 v1 to an E5-1650 v2 last week (Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge) and it only required a BIOS upgrade and a jumper on the motherboard. With the Intel C600 chipset, the Ivy Bridge processor should be able to work. As mentioned above, the BIOS would need to be able to read the new instuction sets included with the new processors, since they include many more instruction sets that the original stock processor (E5-1607 in my case). Unfortunately, I also had the same issue that both an E5-1620 v2 and an E5-1650 v2 did nothing when installed on the T3600, so the BIOS either does not have the ability to work with these processors yet, or perhaps a jumper needs to be changed/added to the MB.

The answer is still No.

Request denied.

Good info, thanks for sharing. And good for HP to give their customers that added value of an easy upgrade path.

Well since Dell has the T3610 I highly doubt it

Thanks for the clear explanation.  I wasted a few hours trying to troubleshoot why the E5-1600 v2 didn't boot on the T3600.

Dell, please release BIOS support!