Xbox Series X slightly warm to the touch when turned off

I noticed this today and I did some digging around and found out it was due to instant on being engaged.

Personally, this is something that will cause me to turn off instant on. I'm not comfortable with my Xbox generating heat, especially if

I'm not playing it for several days.

Idk what Instant On is, but your first step should definitely be turning it off and seeing if it's actually the source of the problem. If it is, than either (A) this is intended (in which case I'd turn it off cause that'd be crazy), or (B) it's a firmware problem, potentially fixed in a future update...in which case I'd also turn it off until said update.

Do you have any games suspended that could be causing minor warmth? I never use rest mode on my PS4 but I could imagine that possibly causing heat with a game in the background.

With Instant On the Xbox is still "on" in a lower power mode when you turn if "off". It's not a "problem" as such - it's working as designed - it's just that you're leaving a computer turned on all the time so of course it will generate some heat.

Digital Foundry found that in Instant On mode the Series X still uses about 30 watts of power constantly, which is less than my satellite TV box.

Personally I find the Series X starts so quickly I just use the Energy Saving mode which turns it off completely.

I had an Xbox One X for maybe like 2 years and I always kept it in Instant-On mode because I wanted to be able to turn it on and have my games in suspend mode ready to go. Nothing ever happened to that console and it also generated some amount of heat when it was in standby but nothing outrageous. I'm similarly keeping the Series X in Instant-On and while I do think it might be ever so slightly warmer than the One X was, I can't be sure but it will probably be fine.

It could just be that the instant on uses some power like everyone says and it being a bit warm is NBD, especially because I believe the fan is off in Instant On (to keep it quiet and because it's well inside heat tolerances at that level.)

OR!

We all know that the original Xbox was kind of a successor to the Sega Dreamcast. And what do we know about the Sega Dreamcast?

Keep an eye on it. It could be waiting for the perfect moment to strike!

Ha!

If Quick Resume is working as it should, the suspended games will stay even if you unplug the Xbox. I don't see the benefit of "Instant On" other than sending game download commands from the Xbox app..?

I had energy saving mode on until some Quick Resume games were pushed off the stack, the tried Instant On and go the same result. I guess that's because QR uses limited data space and used space per game depends on the size of the game in RAM. The Xbox doesn't warn you if it purges a Quick Resume game it seems. So I'm going to switch it back to energy saving.

Heat generation means power use -significate power use. And, if it wastes that much power while in standby mode you should turn it off. Even if that waste heat might not affect anything, that stupid power use should be curbed.

I'm one of those people who has turned my pc off maybe 3 times in 6 years. You'll be fine.

I noticed the same on the One X soon after I bought it.

I'm not so impatient that I need it to turn on instantly and I'd rather save a bit a power, so I usually just turn it all the way off. But I don't think leaving it in "instant on" mode is going to have much impact on the life of the console.