In this paper, laminar convective heat transfer of water-alumina nanofluid in a circular tube with uniform heat flux at the tube wall is investigated. The investigation is performed numerically on the basis of two-component model, which takes into account nanoparticle transport by diffusion and thermophoresis. Two thermal regimes at the tube wall, heating and cooling, are considered and the influence of nanoparticle migration on the heat transfer is analyzed comparatively. The intensity of thermophoresis is characterized by a new empirical model for thermophoretic mobility. It is shown that the nanoparticle volume fraction decreases (increases) in the boundary layer near the wall under heating (cooling) due to thermophoresis. The corresponding variations of nanofluid properties and flow characteristics are presented and discussed. The intensity of heat transfer for the model with thermophoresis in comparison to the model without thermophoresis is studied by plotting the dependence of the heat transfer coefficient on the Peclet number. The effectiveness of water-alumina nanofluid is analyzed by plotting the average heat transfer coefficient against the required pumping power. The analysis of the results reveals that the water-alumina nanofluid shows better performance in the heating regime than in the cooling regime due to thermophoretic effect.