should I go to water cooling?
 

I'm wondering if my situation warrants some water cooling:

I live at more than 7000 feet elevation (so air is thinner), room temperature is nearly 80 F during the day, and I have a dual amd system that when the case lid is on, climbs right over 60 C, and keeps going up. It runs a max of 57 C when the lid is off, and all those fans (2 cpus, gpu, nb, 2 case fans, 2 ps fans) make a lot of noise together. Also, an open desktop case gathers a lot of dust.

I don't want this to digress into the cooling requirements at higher altitudes. Let it suffice that my PC is sweating it out.

Correct me if I am wrong, but by going to water and placing a heat exchanger outside the case, maybe in it's own enclosure, I get:
quieter case
less dust in the case (lower case airflow)
lower temperatures
easier fan control (regulate 1 instead of 5 or 6)
a big bill$$$

As a side question, has anyone turned their tower-case water cooled pc on its side and noticed improvements from lower head?

First off, a ambient style water cooled system does not use alot of electricity unless you use an overpowered pump (which will also ad heat to the system). The eheim I am using in my current system uses like 28watts. That is low. Think of your house lights.

Secondly, height does not correspond to head in a closed system. What will cause head are restrictions: tubing, waterblocks, fittings, and heat exchanger. All will cause restrictions which will result in higher head.

Whether or not watercooling is for you, you will have to decide. Do alot of research before you buy anything. Read as many posts as you can here, and you should be able to decide for yourself. A well designed system will lower noise, will lower temps, and increase overclockability/stability.

Brian

So you're saying there isn't much to gain from eliminating the foot or two of vertical that water has to travel in tower cases?

Whatever affect gravity has on the water as it goes up, is applied negatively as it goes down. Therefore eliminating vertical height as head loss. The only time vertical height affects head loss is when you are pumping from one body of water to another.

Brian