Introduction

I have had this product in my lab for several months without writing the review. I stressed it over and over, wanting to see if something untoward would pop up. It never did. And, it was just so darned useful, I just kept it in the system.

Well, it is time to write the review. It worked perfectly all that time, and I just have nothing bad to say about it.

I am referring to the Torus RM-10 Power Conditioner.

The Design

The RM-10 is a 10 ampere toroidal isolation transformer, with several associated supplemental circuits attached, in a chassis with eight receptacles on the rear panel. The idea is that your components that are connected to the RM-10 are electrically isolated from the incoming AC supply from the wall. This allows the output impedance to be very low, and so maximum power can be delivered to your components. One of the main features of the Torus line is the ability to deliver peak demands for short periods of time (transients) without letting the voltage sag (the transformer itself is a storage device).

The models come in numerous sizes, such as RM-2.5, RM-5, and RM-10 shown below, with the numbers designating the output in amperes. RM-15's and higher are available in balanced configuration. The largest one is the RM-100 ($8,500), which will deliver 100 amperes at 120 volts. (Torus will make you an RM-200 on special order.)

Torus designed the products with very low output impedance (0.2 ohms in the RM-10, 0.02 ohms in the RM-100), and they employ Series Mode Surge Protection circuits which do not shunt voltage surges to ground like MOVs do (MOVs are the usual surge protection device in power conditioners). The toroidal transformer is a low noise design and utilizes Plitron “NBT” (Narrow Bandwidth Technology) to attenuate differential and common-mode noise without external circuits or components.

Here is a photo of the inside of a Torus chassis (RM-100).