Could touching the thermal grease screw with my processor?

technically, you shouldn't have touched it. all you did was lower the amount of heat your CPU moves from itself to the heatsink, just a little bit. From the way it sounds, however, it maybe several things. 1. Memory bad. 2. PSU bad. try and see if you cant test each memory stick out (like put 1 stick in and not the other) and see if it fixes itself.