Most CPUs these days don't have pins to be bent. Killing a PC component with static shock is more difficult than you imagine and is pretty hard to do even if you aren't taking serious precautions like using anti-static wrist straps. Misapplying thermal past won't kill anything unless you use so much that it oozes out from the CPU-heatsink joint and short-circuits stuff on the motherboard (and that's assuming that your heatsink doesn't have thermal compound pre-applied, and that the aftermarket thermal compound you're using is actually electrically conductive).

It takes willful ignorance and disregard for the simple instructions included with each component to even have a chance at breaking the expensive things.