The additional water mass adds nothing but a delay in reaching max temps. Once max temp is reached is where your rig is running at the "balance point" where the heat from the CPU is dissipated by the rad at the same rate.
The reason that it takes time to reach that point, is that the rad needs to have a difference in temperature between the coolant and the air flowing through it.
Think about it: the instant that you turn on your computer (assuming everything was off), the coolant temp is the same as the ambiant air, so what's a rad going to do? Absolutely nothing, but when the coolant temp increases (thank you CPU!) then the rad can start doing some actual work.
As for spikes in temps, it can only be absorbed by the waterblock, if it allows the heat to be transmitted that fast (and believe us, you won't find anything better than copper for the price).
Temp spikes is not something to worry about, unless you're running some new weird type of cooling.
All in all, the heat flow is this:
CPU to [copper] waterblock
waterblock to water
water to [copper] rad
rad to air.
As for the res, it would be more appropriately called an air trap. It doesn't need to be a square box, but it does need to be able to seperate the air from the water, as the coolant passes through it.
Some people run a submerged pump, so they put it in the air trap, and call it a res.
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