Hi,

I don't think R720 does support E5-2696 V2. To our internal source, it can only support up to E5-2690. I'm not too sure of the eBay source information is accurate, I can only provide you what's available to us and verified by engineering. 

Though the documentation is saying not support, let try this, remove all the components except: 

•One Power Supply
•Control Panel (for power button functionality)
•Working cable connection between control panel and system board
•One Processor (CPU) in socket CPU1 (minimum for troubleshooting) 
•One Memory Module (DIMM) installed in socket A1
•System Board

Try powering on the server, and check if you have the error. If yes, then the server is not able to support the CPU. If no error, then install the other remain components that you have. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hi, thank you for replying. I think that officially R720 supports E5-2697 v2 (also 12 cores and 13W compared to E5-2696 v2 with 120W). I tried your suggestion, removing as many connections I could, but still no luck. The message still persist and the server does not boot.

I did some investigation, and below is what I found so far, in case someone has the same issue. Shortly, a Dell R720 with a motherboard model 0DCWD1 will work with this CPU. My server has a motherboard model 0C4Y3R. If you have some info regarding the differences between these 2 motherboards, and how to figure out what MB a server has, based on the Service Tag, this would be helpful.
I also found another older post on this forum where someone was complaining that a R720 with motherboard 0C4Y3R is slower than a R720 with a motherboard 0X6H47 (all other parts being identical, like CPU, RAM, etc.)

As I mentioned in the initial post, I found on eBay a R720 with E5-2696 v2. The listing did not offer technical details. like a BIOS version, or motherboard version, etc. I searched more, and I found another ebay listing for the processor only, but this seller has a mention in the description:

System Compatibility:

The following is a non-exclusive list of compatible products:

Servers & Workstations:

• Dell: Precision T5610, T7610, R7610 (incompatible to PowerEdge 12G servers)
• HP: ProLiant Servers Gen 8; Z420, Z620, Z820 Workstation
• Lenovo: ThinkServer RD540, RD640; ThinkStation C30, D30, S30
• IBM: System x3550 M4, x3650 M4/BD; BladeCenter HS23
• FUJITSU: PRIMERGY RX200 S8, RX300 S8, TX300 S8, BX924 S4; CELSIUS M730, R930
• Cisco: UCS C220 M3, C240 M3, C3160, C3260
• Oracle: Sun Server X4-2L; Sun Blade X4-B
• Apple: Mac Pro 6.1 (Late 2013)

Motherboards:

• Intel: incompatible
• Supermicro: X9S series, X9D series
• Tyan: S705 series, S706 series
• Asus: Z9 series, P9X79 series, Rampage IV series, Sabertooth X79, X79-Deluxe
• Gigabyte: GA-6P series, GA-7P series
• MSI: MS-S0131, X79A series, Big Bang-XPower II
• ASRock: EP2C602/6 series, X79 series
• EVGA: SR-X, X79 family

I personally tested the CPU on a Dell T3610 and it's working fine.

The last thing I checked is the cpubenchmark.net page. There is a section called "Last 5 Baselines for [Dual CPU] Intel Xeon E5-2696 v2 @ 2.50GHz" and the links redirects you to a page with some details. The 4th one is showing a system with dual E5-2696 v2 with a motherboard Dell Inc. 0DCWD1

I have a Dell R720 with two E5-2697 v2 and 384GB of RAM on board. Everything is working for one year non-stop. One exception is that the cooling fans make a louder noise, I believe because of the power/thermal specifications of this CPU and they can't be adjusted. But as for the E5-2696 v2 I think they are simply not supported by Dell.

@abirsanu​ https://github.com/tigerblue77/Dell_iDRAC_fan_controller_Docker

This allows for more direct control over the fan speeds. If it hits a critical threshold, it will kick the default Dell profile back on.