Short answer: maybe.
Long answer: it is not the benchmarking app that is damaging components, but improper care or overclocking. Improper care is when you leave your fans jammed with dust and hair. Their capability to remove heat decreases and heat is not good for electronics. Overclocking also leads to extreme heat accumulation, and often it is done with intentionally voltage increasements, which are even more bad for components.
Anyway most of the modern components have thermal protection that shuts them down when a heat levels exceed defined thresholds. Most of the old CPUs doesn't have such thermal throttling and Youtube is crowded with clips of burned processors.
Yes, modern chips will make a best effort not to self-destruct. – Ryan C. Thompson – 2010-04-18T06:43:19.877
I've recently cleaned my computer's innards. My purpose for benchmarking is just to compare an operating system which has been used for 2 months and a recently installed os – Wern Ancheta – 2010-04-18T07:13:11.693